


finding a reason

by softspiderlad



Series: to build a family [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Death, Minor Character Death, but he's trying!!, dont worry about it, harley is upset and doesn't know how to process it so he acts kind of like an asshole, or he will, peter was fuckin messed up last fic, tags will be updated accordingly as i post chapters, this time it's harley's turn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-05-15 17:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19300753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softspiderlad/pseuds/softspiderlad
Summary: If there's one thing to be sure of, it's that Harley Keener will always resent his father for leaving. Even now, after William Keener's passing, and even when faced with the reality that while William left Harley and Abbie, he never stopped being a dad. The three strangers that share some physical trails with Harley and Abbie are proof of that.And Peter? Well, Peter's just here for Harley, but maybe he can help pick up the broken pieces of this family before they go back to New York.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh shit it's sequel time!!
> 
> if you don't read making a home before this, then it will make literally no sense, so i suggest reading that real quick lol. it's good i promise!! i'm pretty damn proud of it!!
> 
> i'm kind of guessing that this'll be five chapters? but like i'm pulling this shit out of my ass so i can't say for sure, but for the time being, i'm gonna assume it'll be five chapters and then i'll change the chapter count accordingly if it turns out that i'm wrong. my goal is to have this be around 50k-60k words, like making a home, but the way in which i split it up into chapters tends to vary, so i guess we'll just have to wait and see!!

_Miles Morales got invited to the Stark Tower the day after school was over, on the very first day of his summer, and he was not at all expecting to see what he walked in on._

_Harley Keener was curled up in a ball on the couch, either already asleep or very close to it, with his head resting in Peter Parker’s lap, obvious tear tracks drying on his somewhat splotchy red cheeks. The AI, who had formally introduced herself to Miles as Friday when he had stepped into the elevator in the lobby, quietly alerted Peter of Miles’s presence, and when Peter looked over at him, he was wearing a tired smile with slight bags under his eyes. “You can sit,” he said, tone soft and welcoming._

_“Uh…” Miles looked around the spacious living room in uncertainty, trying to figure out the best place to go, and then decided to plop himself down on the loveseat to the right of the sofa that Harley and Peter were on. He gently set his backpack on the floor in order to minimize the suspicious clanking of spray paint cans, and then he looked at the duo with a slight frown, keeping his voice quiet in order to ask, “Is he okay? It looks like he’s been crying. Did something happen?”_

_Peter ran his hands gently through Harley’s hair, his lips twitching up into a sad sort of smile when Harley let out a content puff of a sigh and sort of nuzzled closer to him. “He got some news a few days ago, and it’s hitting him pretty hard,” Peter told Miles vaguely, “but he’ll be alright. That kind of connects to why I invited you here, though. We gotta talk about some stuff.”_

_Instantly, Miles sat up a bit straighter, squared his shoulders a little more than usual, tried to appear more mature and less like a wary twelve year old boy. “Like, the security stuff?”_

_“Yeah,” Peter nodded, looking back up at Miles, though he kept running his fingers through Harley’s hair while he was talking. “Safety protocols, stuff to keep you out of danger. Mister Stark and I have been talking, throwing out some ideas, and I think we figured out a pretty good cover story to tell your parents to make sure this is easier on you, but I told him that we couldn’t do anything without talking to you first. It’s gonna be your life we’re protecting, so you should get a say in what we do, you know?”_

_“A cover story?” Miles repeated, dread already starting to form in the pit of his stomach. He slumped back, posture deflating, and meekly asked, “I have to lie to my parents? I… I’m not very good at that.”_

_With a little chuckle, Peter said, “I’m a pretty bad liar, too, don’t worry. And we’re not gonna make you lie to your parents. That’d be unfair to you, and I’m trying to make this as easy for you as possible.”_

_Confused, Miles slowly questioned, “Then what do you mean by having a cover story?”_

_“We’re thinking of doing the same thing for you that Mister Stark did for me, but to a smaller degree,” Peter explained, shifting his eyes down to gaze at Harley’s sleep soft features, an absent sort of action, as if he didn’t even realize he was doing it. “He doesn’t usually hire high schoolers as interns because of scheduling stuff, but things kind of had to change a bit when we needed a cover story for why I knew him and why he was sort of a constant presence in my life, you know? So, he made me an intern, and we want to make you a sort of intern in training, if that makes sense. Since you’re still so young, he can’t make you an intern, too, but he can tell your parents that he keeps his eyes on advanced schools like Midtown, and we can say that we met on your field trip to Midtown and I mentioned you to him, and he looked into your records and decided to try and have you shadow the interns for the summer. Once you’re fifteen, he can offer you a real internship, like what me and Harley have, but until then, this is the best we can do, and it’d help explain you knowing me and Mister Stark, and why you’ll have all this high tech stuff that has safety precautions built into them. It just seems like the easiest option, you know? But if your parents say no, or if you want to do something else, then we’ll figure something out. It’s all up to you and what you’re comfortable with.”_

_Miles blinked, looked at the floor, the ceiling, around the room, and then looked back at Peter with wide eyes, watching as Peter glanced back up to meet his gaze. “Could I… could I really work here?”_

_“If you say yes to this, you would already be working here, technically,” Peter told him, his sad smile becoming a little less sad at the sight of Miles’s genuine excitement and wonder. “You’d be working under me and Harley, and we’d kind of be in charge of you. Mister Stark will oversee everything, obviously, and he’ll make sure you’re just as protected as we are, but you’d sort of be, like… an apprentice, or something.”_

_“That’s so cool,” Miles whispered, eyes going even wider in awe. “I wanna do that.”_

_That made Peter’s more genuine smile grow, just a little bit. “Just gotta get your parents to agree to letting you do it,” he said, looking pleased about Miles liking his idea so much. A moment later, however, he faltered, looked back down at Harley, and sighed. “You’re gonna have to do that without us, though.”_

_Miles hesitated, head cocked slightly to the side. “What do you mean?”_

_“Harley’s gonna be flying home for a week,” Peter said, sounding a little hoarse and heavy and definitely back to sporting that sad aura that he’d been holding when Miles walked in. “I’m going with him, because Mister Stark is working on fixing the accords, and Miss Potts has some important meetings that she can’t miss. And I… I don’t want him to go alone, so I’m going. But… Tony’s gonna be with you, okay? If he was able to convince my Aunt May to let me intern for him, he’ll be able to talk your parents into it.”_

_“Oh. Okay.” Miles tried not to look as nervous as he felt. Knowing that Peter was Spider-Man was anxiety inducing all on it’s own ― but Spider-Man had come to his Auntie’s house, had been so kind and Miles had felt comfortable around him, even more so now that he knew who Spider-Man was. But… Iron Man? Tony Stark? That was kind of terrifying. What if he embarrassed himself?_

_“Miles,” Peter said, grabbing the kid’s attention instantly. He wore a genuinely supportive smile, nodded his head once, the action simple. “Everything will be okay, I swear. And we’ll be back before you know it.”_

_In all honestly, Miles wasn’t sure how helpful that really was, but he still relaxed a little bit, because he just knew that he could trust Peter, that he could trust Harley, and if they trusted Tony Stark, then Miles trusted Tony Stark, too. It was just that simple. Because, like Peter said, everything would be okay._

The first half of the flight is just quiet and passes fairly quickly, thanks to the speed of the Quinjet that Tony arranged to take them. For the most part, Harley just looks out the window, silent and borderline stoic, but Peter can see the way his lip twitches every few moments, hinting at the beginnings of a grimace that he manages to fight away a second later, as if he wants to keep his distress off of his face. Peter shifts in his seat for the second time in three minutes – the hundredth time since they took off, no doubt – and squeezes Harley’s hand, waiting patiently for a few minutes until Harley returns the gesture.

He keeps reciprocating slower. Every. Single. Time.

Which, okay – _fuck_ that. Peter isn’t going to let Harley sit in his own head for the next hour. It’s already been a week and a half since he got that call and started rotating through these shifts in emotion – starting with the incredulousness, the laughing and the scoffing and the murmuring, shifting slowly into a sort of sadness, a bit more teary eyed and clingy (usually when Peter is most likely able to get Harley to fall asleep for a few hours), and then drifting into this trance like state of staring and silence and fighting to keep all emotions off his face. Eventually, he’ll either fall asleep, or he’ll start acting like normal, smiley and jokey and giggles happy pet names to the max, before the cycle repeats. Peter doesn’t want to rush Harley’s process here, because this is a big thing – not only did the father he was abandoned by die, but he found out that he has three half siblings in Tennessee waiting to meet him – but if he’s able to draw Harley out of his mind and into the present for a little bit, then he wants to do that. He wants to help.

So, he nudges his knee against Harley’s, then does it again, clears his throat, and repeats until Harley lets out a loud huff and turns to face Peter with a look of confusion and mild annoyance, but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before Peter is asking him, “What’s Rose Hill like?”

“Small,” Harley says, slumping his shoulders a bit. “Boring.”

“I’ve only been outside of New York once,” Peter tells him, trying to keep his voice leveled on some middle ground, not too chirpy but not bland, either. “When Mister Stark took me to Germany for that fight against Cap. But I didn’t really get to see much outside of that airport and the hotel, and I’ve never been anywhere that isn’t part of a bigger city. I’m kind of excited to see what Tennessee is like.”

Harley kind of just squints at Peter for a moment, clearly being able to see through his attempt at distracting Harley from his own thoughts, but then he relaxes, wears a little bit of a smile, small and bashful and a little sheepish, too. “You didn’t have to come with me,” he says, not for the first time.

And, just like every other time Harley has said that, Peter simply tells him, “I want to be here. For you.”

Harley’s smiles grows, still genuine, warm, and grateful. He leans over and rests his head on Peter’s shoulder, presses their sides together just a bit, and lets out a soft sigh before saying, “I’ll give you the grand tour of Rose Hill tomorrow, show you the only interesting places in that shit hole. Trust me, though, you’ll be bored out of your mind, but there’s a roller rink in the next town over that my Ma used to take Abbie and I to, so maybe I’ll take you there. That could be kinda fun. Have you ever been roller skating?”

“Once,” Peter answers, cheek pressed to Harley’s hair as he leans his head against Harley’s. “Uncle Ben took me when I was eight. I fell and bit through my lip and had to go to the hospital to get stitches.”

“That’s what this little scar is from?” Harley asks, an incredulous sort of laugh rumbling from the center of his chest as he turns his head and lifts a hand to brush his pointer finger against the small, barely noticeable white scar a few centimeters below Peter’s lower lip.

Peter smiles, eyes sparkling. “You noticed the scar?”

“Well, yeah,” Harley says in a _duh_ sort of voice, as of the answer should be obvious. He flashes Peter a look of disbelief, apparently somewhat offended by the question. “I tend to look at your mouth whenever I wanna kiss you, and I wanna kiss you a lot. What, did you think I wouldn’t see it?”

“No one else has,” Peter shrugs, though he feels his face flush, just a little bit. “I always have to point it out to people. You’re the first person to find it without me showing you where it is.”

That makes Harley look a little pleased, brows quirking up and lips twitching into the slightest hint of a smug grin. “Maybe I just pay more attention to you than most people.”

“Maybe you should stop staring at my mouth and get to kissing me, Keener.”

Harley laughs, a sudden and wonderful sound that bursts from him and releases the wide grin that he’s been smothering for over a week now. If Peter were standing up, he’d go weak in the knees at the sight, but they’re both sitting down, so the only physical reaction he has is a slight tremor in his hands when Harley says, “Honey, all you had to do was ask,” before pulling Peter in to seal his lips in a kiss.

The rest of the flight isn’t as boring after that.

 

 

 

 

Angela Keener hugs Harley with the strength of a mother who has gone months without seeing their child, like she’s trying to heal the hole left after Harley went to New York. She looks haunted, in a way that Peter knows all too well – the same kind of haunted that Aunt May was, and still is, after the death of Uncle Ben. Harley buries his face in his mother’s neck and lets out a shuddering breath, and despite the fact that they had spent the last half of the flight in high spirits, giggles and kisses and joking and, at one point, laughing so hard they could barely breathe, Harley still grips onto the back of her shirt and sobs.

The sound is grating and raw and painful. Peter winces, even though he’s been hearing Harley off and on crying since he got that phone call, and he looks away to give the mother and son a moment to themselves. This isn’t a good time for either of them, and they need their space, even if only for a minute or two.

“You’re Peter.”

It’s said as a statement, not a question. Peter turns around, finds a girl that looks to be no older than eleven standing behind him with her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders squared, jaw set and a hard look in her eyes. She looks like Harley. “Yeah, I am,” he tells her. “And you’re Abbie, right?”

Abbie scans over him, eyes scrutinizing and harsh and stern. She doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t really have any reason to, other than the fact that he’s her brother’s boyfriend. Peter lets her look, stuffs his hands into his pockets and waits patiently, until she says, “Harley really likes you.”

“I really like him, too,” Peter replies, simple, honest. _More than like,_ he thinks. _Eventually, anyway._

“Why are you here?” Abbie asks, though she lowers her voice, takes a subtle step away from where her mother and her brother are murmuring softly and sniffling together, clearly not wanting them to overhear this. Peter takes a step with her, and doesn’t even flinch when she murmurs, “This whole thing sucks, and I don’t get why you’d do this. I mean, you like him, sure, but this is- this is a big thing. Why come here?”

The answer is simple, really. He doesn’t even need to think about it. “For him,” he says, because that’s all there is to it, nothing less and nothing more. “I’m here for him. To be here for him, if he needs me. Or just to sit next to him if he doesn’t. Whatever helps the most. If he wants me to leave, then I’ll leave.”

There’s a long moment where Abbie just kind of stares at him, flickers her gaze over to her brother, furrows her brow, and then goes back to staring at him, the cycle repeating once, twice, three times, before she lets out a sigh and asks, “Do you know what this week is? Did Harley tell you?”

No immediate answer jumps to Peter’s mind. “What do you mean?”

“That’s a no,” Abbie murmurs, looking way too mature and knowledgeable for an eleven year old. Her features sort of soften, though, and when she looks at him again, it’s with a visible pain in her eyes, and her voice shakes a little when she says, “This week’s gonna hurt him, and I hope he tells you why, ‘cause Mama and I can’t be the only people lookin’ out for him anymore. He needs more than just us.”

“He has me,” Peter tells her instantly, frowning. “And he has Mister Stark, and Miss Potts, and our friends in New York, and more. He has a lot of people looking out for him.”

But Abbie just shakes her head and says, “Not in the same way.”

Before Peter can ask her what, exactly, that means, he hears Harley say his name, and his attention instantly shifts to his boyfriend, who’s scrubbing the sleeve of his shirt against his cheeks to rid them of the tear tracks as he offers Peter a somewhat wobbly smile. “Mama, this is Peter,” Harley says to his mother, gesturing his free hand in Peter’s direction. “Peter, this is my Ma.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss K—”

“You—” Angela Keener points at him, her smile dazzling and bright despite her bloodshot eyes, a simple curl of lips that Peter can already tell is where Harley got his soft smile from, “—can call me Angie.”

Peter smiles politely, looks over to see Harley watching the interaction with glimmering eyes, and nods his head once. “Miss Angie,” he settles on, because that’s just who he is, and it makes Angie laugh before she pulls him in for a gentle sort of side hug. “I’ve heard a lot about you. And Abbie, too.”

“Oh, I bet I’ve heard more about you,” Angie chuckles, amused.

“Mama,” Harley warns, but he doesn’t look very intimidating as he widens his eyes and begs her with his gaze to stop talking before she can say anything embarrassing. “Don’t. Please.”

“I won’t,” Angie assures him, shrugging. “Not yet, anyway. Now say hi to your sister.”

Harley rolls his eyes, but his shoulders are loose and his posture is relaxed and Peter watches as he pulls Abbie into a bear hug, swings her around until she’s laughing and slapping at his arms, and he thinks that maybe this won’t be as hard as originally perceived, if Harley is always this happy around his mom and sister. Maybe, with the two of them, and with Peter doing whatever he can, Harley will be alright.

Maybe he’ll be okay.

 

 

 

 

Harley Keener looks a lot like his mother.

This isn’t a recent discovery, isn’t some secret that he never uncovered while growing up. It’s been fairly obvious since he was a baby – his eyes are shaped a lot like hers, his face is a little rounded at the jaw like hers is, his nose is sloped similarly and his hair has the same waviness, the same random little curls that sometimes like to stick up for no reason and refuse to be tames. He looks like his mom, and he’s okay with looking like his mom, because when he looks in the mirror, it’s easy to overlook the vague signs in his features that resemble his father.

It’s not so easy when he faces the three kids that are, apparently, more children of one William Keener.

The first one to introduce themself is Lucy, and she has the same eye color as Will, the sharper jawline and the squared shoulders, even does the same finger tapping nervous tick that Harley remembers his dad having when he’d be watching a football game and anxiously watching the screen. Sometimes, Abbie, only one at the time, would grab his hand and giggle as he instantly swiveled it around and tickled her.

Harley doesn’t want to think about that.

The second one is a kid named Sam, and he is a spitting image of William Keener, down to the way he stands, the width of his shoulders and the mole on his jaw, just below his left ear. He looks at Harley with a sense of unease and wariness, glances at Lucy with a quirked brow and an unreadable twitch of his lips, and Harley swears he can picture a moment, a long forgotten memory of his mother ranting about her job at the dinner table, baby Abbie in her high chair, Harley and William on opposite sides of the table, and when Angie huffed a curse under her breath, William had lifted his brows at Harley with an amused little smile, a twitch of his nose and a subtle wink, micro expressions working as a secret language that only the two of them could understand – and Harley didn’t really understand, but he was six and he still giggled and scrunched his nose in an attempt at a response, and William had nodded like it made perfect sense.

God, Harley really doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to remember his father. He doesn’t.

The last of these supposed half siblings is the youngest, and her name is Hannah. Her hair is long and the same dirty blonde as Harley’s, because he got that from his dad, he just chose to forget it. Hannah is holding Lucy’s hand and looking around with wide eyes and Harley feels sick because she can’t be more than eight years old and she looks sad and terrified and exactly like how Harley looked when he stayed up until one in the morning waiting for his dad to come home and he never fucking did.

He never came home. William Keener never came back, and Harley is so fucking angry that he can’t really stop himself from crossing his arms over his chest and asking, “Why’d you come here?”

Sam flinches at the bitter tone in Harley’s voice, and Hannah looks confused as she stares up at Lucy, who simply frowns a bit and tells Harley, “We wanted to reach out and meet you and Abbie. It’s kind of overwhelming, you know? Finding out you have two more siblings you never knew about.”

“Try three,” Harley states, cold and closed off and only relaxing a little when he feels Peter press a steady hand to the small of his back, a small reminder that he isn’t here alone. Lucy blanches at his words, looks down at Hannah with a little bit of a forced smile, and only looks back up when he says, “You could have just, like, called, or something, you know? Sent an email, wrote a letter, whatever. Why show up like this? Why stay in a shitty motel in a shitty town for two weeks just ‘cause I couldn’t fly in any sooner?”

“Dad’s funeral,” Sam says, blunt and sudden and there, and Harley almost physically steps away because no one has ever called William Keener dad other than Abbie and himself and something about it feels wrong in a way that he can’t even begin to explain. “He grew up here,” Sam goes on, either not noticing that blank expression on Harley’s face or choosing not to point it out. “Our mom is from here, too. She, uh… she decided to have his funeral here, at the church they both went to growing up. It’s on Friday.”

Friday, being two days away. Nearly tomorrow, because it’s ten at night on a Wednesday. _Fuck._

Abbie grabs Harley’s hand and squeezes. “Can we go?” she asks, quiet and meek and upset.

“Of course you can,” Lucy answers softly, gently. Harley would be pretty happy with someone treating Abbie with the same gentle care that Harley always has, but circumstances make it grate against his nerves and piss him off, because Abbie is his sister, not Lucy’s.

“I’m not going,” he tells them simply. Abbie drops his hand, and he hears his mother’s sharp inhale from where she’s hovering by the entryway leading to the kitchen, and oh, that bugs him, too. These people are in his house, calling his father Dad and acting like they should be all buddy-buddy when he wants nothing to do with _any_ of this. This is the place Harley grew up in, that couch is the same couch he cried on when he missed his dad, and the room upstairs is where he slept every night until he left for New York three months ago. These people don’t belong here.

Does Harley still belong here?

“I wanna go to bed,” he says, to no one in particular, and he doesn’t look at his half siblings as he faces his mom and asks, “Can Peter just stay in my room with me? I don’t want him staying on the couch.”

“It’s fine,” Peter tries to interject, quiet and a little awkward but still with a hand settled on Harley’s back because he’s here and he’s lovely and Harley is so fucking lucky to have him. “I don’t mind—”

But Angie just forces some kind of pained smile and tells them, “Of course it’s okay. I trust you.”

And with that, Harley leads Peter through the living room and up the stairs.

 

 

 

 

_Once, when Harley was four years old, he fell off of a swing._

_The landing itself wasn’t all too bad, but in his little mind, it was traumatizing, if only for the few minutes it lasted before his short attention span moved on to something else. His knee was scraped up and hurt like hell, and there was a small trail of blood coming from where he bit too harshly into his lip upon hitting the ground. At first, he hadn’t moved, had been too shocked to react, and then the pain set in and he found himself wailing in the middle of the only park in Rose Hill, the kids around him giving him uncomfortable looks or ignoring him completely._

_His dad was there in an instant, gathering the sobbing toddler in his arms and murmuring quiet comfort, wiping away his tears and telling him that he was okay. Harley had clutched onto his father like a lifeline, weeping into his shoulder because he was so young and even if it didn’t really hurt all that bad, it sure did scare him, and in his eyes, that was world ending. In that moment, he was terrified and hurt._

_“You’re alright, champ,” Will soothed him, rubbing circles into the center of his back and rocking him back and forth, trying to ease his cries. “It’s okay, you’re okay. Let’s go get some ice cream, okay? Ice cream always makes the owies feel better, doesn’t it?”_

_Harley had only sniffled and complied when Will had him sit on the nearest bench and kneeled in front of him to make sure his scraped knee was cleaned off and poorly bandaged, making a joke about how his mom would probably redo it when they got home because she was used to having to bandage the both of them up, and by the time they made their way to the grocery store to get the ice cream of Harley’s choice, he was already giggling and laughing and skipping down the sidewalk happily._

_They got a box of four fudgesicles, and they sat on the curb to eat them together, because Will’s car was in the shop and the ice cream would have melted in the time it took them to walk home, and while Harley was happily working on his second fudgesicle, his dad turned to him and said, “You know I love you, don’t you, bud? I love you, and I love being your dad. You know that, right?”_

_Too young to notice the genuine strain on his father’s features, Harley had just joyfully nodded, grinned a sticky chocolate-covered grin, and said, “Yuh huh, I know!”_

_It had been a pretty good day._

 

 

 

“You know it isn’t their fault, right?”

Harley tries not to react, just keeps brushing his teeth in the little bathroom located across the hall from his bedroom. His mother must have gone in and cleaned it up after Harley left, because it had been a borderline disaster zone last he saw it, and now the remainder of his shit that he didn’t bring to New York with him is organized and neat and nice looking. Not that he’s complaining – if he had thought, before leaving, that he’d be returning with his boyfriend only a few months later, he would have made sure his room was spotless before driving off. He’s grateful, honestly, but it also kind of aches, the idea of his mom sorting through his stuff and wondering when he’d be able to visit.

Who knew just how soon he’d be coming back? And for a reason like this, too.

God, this sucks.

“Harley?” Peter says, already done brushing his teeth and waiting for Harley to finish, sitting on the edge of a neatly made bed with space themed sheets and an Iron Man alarm clock on the bedside table that Tony had sent to him as a joke gift on his fourteenth birthday.

With a sigh, Harley spits the rest of the toothpaste out and quickly rinses out his mouth before carelessly tossing his toothbrush onto the counter and crossing the hall, barely remembering to shut off the bathroom light along the way. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” he tells Peter as soon as he pulls his bedroom door shut behind him, flicking off that light switch, too, leaving the room illuminated solely by the lamp settled next to the alarm clock. “I’m tired. I just wanna sleep.”

“Okay,” Peter agrees instantly, looking up at Harley with wide, expressive eyes. He looks worried, probably is even more worried than he looks, because Peter Parker feels a lot and he seems to feel even more in terms of Harley Keener. “I just… I just wanted to point that out. You have every right to be upset, and I’m not gonna pretend to know what you’re going through or how it feels, but it isn’t their fault.”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it,” Harley states firmly, and he feels kind of like shit when his voice comes out colder than intended, but he can’t bring himself to bite on his tongue or murmur an apology. He just climbs into his twin sized bed that’s probably too small for both of them to sleep in, the mattress kind of old and lumpy and not nearly as comfortable as the one that Harley has grown used to sleeping on in New York, and he wordlessly holds up a corner of the blanket until Peter is letting out a soft sort of sigh and crawling under it, resting his head on one of the pillows and pushing himself back until he’s against the wall, giving Harley the most room as possible.

For a long moment, neither of them speak, the only sound being the click of the lamp as Harley shuts it off, and the shuffling of the sheets as he settles into the bed next to Peter. Then, in a tiny little voice, Peter asks him, “Why don’t you want to go to your dad’s funeral?”

Harley thinks his heart must freeze in his chest as he considers the question, and he almost spits out something overly harsh about not wanting to fucking talk about it, but this is Peter, and he’s already been unintentionally a little bit rude, and he doesn’t want to accidentally make it even worse. Which is why, after sighing heavily and blindly reaching over until they can intertwine their fingers together, he simply answers, “He never showed up after he left before, so why should I be the one to show up now that he’s really gone?”

And then he rolls onto his side, his back to Peter and their interlocked hands being the only point of contact between them, and he keeps his eyes closed and forces himself to fall asleep by trying to ignore the nasty feeling curdling in the pit of his stomach and swirling angrily in the center of his chest.

Peter lets out a slow breath, squeezes Harley’s hand, and tries not to notice when he doesn’t do it back.

 

 

 

 

Breakfast in the Keener house is kind of chaotic.

Angie has the week off of work due to this whole fiasco, because she’s been working at the same diner for years and her manager had only needed to take one look at her heartbroken features before shooing her out the door and telling her not to worry about a damn thing. Because of this, she’s already up and cooking by the time Harley blinks himself awake, squinting through the light filtering in through the window above his bed. He can faintly smell eggs and bacon being cooked, and what he thinks must be hash browns, too, and he can’t help but smile a little bit as he hears faint music and the familiar sound of Abbie laughing to something his mother said. He almost forgets about where he is and why he’s there until he hears a third voice drift up the stairs, too, and he looks over his shoulder to find that Peter isn’t there. Peter is downstairs, with his mother and his sister, and he says something that makes Angie snort.

The sheets where Peter had been laying are wrinkles and knotted together, and Harley wonders just how much he’d tossed and turned last night, but pushes that thought to the back of his mind as his stomach grumbles impatiently, the aroma of the food downstairs calling to him. He’s helpless to do anything other than clamber to his feet and stumble his way out the door and down the stairs, bleary eyed and all.

“It’s really cool, actually,” he hears Peter say, rounding the corner into the kitchen just in time to see him waving a hand vaguely through the air as he explains something to Angie and Abbie. “I have a kind of, uh- a sort of hearing sensitivity thing? So noises are just kind of really amplified and super loud for me, and it can get really overwhelming sometimes, so he made me these sort of reverse hearing aid things that help to filter out noise and make it less… bombarding, I guess? I don’t know, he’s only made the first prototype, which already worked pretty well when I tried them, and we’re gonna be working together to make it better and iron out all the details and the bugs. Mister Stark also said that he can get the doctor in the tower, Dr. Cho, to make a note and everything so that I can be allowed to wear them at school and stuff when they’re done. But the design is amazing, like—”

“Couldn’t you wait until after I got up to start telling them about the weird shit I’ve been doing?” Harley interrupts, but he’s smiling wide and fond because both Abbie and his mother had been listening intently to every word coming out of Peter’s mouth, clearly enraptured by what he was saying.

Peter looks at him, and he instantly brightens, lips twitching up and eyes glimmering, just a little bit. “It’s not weird,” he says, pointing an accusing finger at Harley with a small shake of his head. “It’s brilliant.”

Harley rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop the pleased feeling in his gut at the idea of his boyfriend boasting about him to his own family. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a genius,” Harley says, semi-sarcastic. “Says the one who literally makes all of the tech for freakin’ Spider-Man, and who built a bot specifically meant to throw things at Tony until he goes to get some sleep, and who—”

“Why can’t I just brag about how smart you are?” Peter pouts, though he’s already sporting the lightest shade of a blush from the compliments. “Don’t turn this around, Keener. You really are a genius.”

“Says the genius to the lesser genius,” Harley snorts, but he’s only doing it to poke fun at this point, his grin wide and playful and thoroughly amused as Peter narrows his eyes, looking ready to list off a thousand reasons why Harley is not _the_ _lesser genius_. Before he can start to go down the bullet points, though, Harley makes his way forward and plops himself in the seat next to Peter, not even sparing a thought or worry about his family being in the room or the fact that he definitely still has morning breath before leaning over to kiss him quickly, just ‘cause he wants to. “I’m kidding,” he tells Peter after pulling away, though he only goes far enough to prop his chin on Peter’s shoulder, grin softening to something more tender and gentle and god, he’s gone for this boy. “But you are _way_ better at chemistry than me.”

“And you’re way better at mechanics,” Peter shrugs, though he makes sure not to jostle Harley too much when he does so. “Different areas of expertise and preference don’t define intellect. We’re both smart.”

Humming, Harley takes a moment to consider this, then decidedly says, “Fine, you win,” before pressing a kiss to the curve of Peter’s cheek and pulling all the way away with the intention of satisfying his still grumbling stomach. He points at Peter to add, “But you’ll be just as good at mechanics as me after a few more months, I guarantee it, Parker. You’ll see, and then you really will be smarter than me,” before rounding the counter and pulling a plate from the cupboard. He doesn’t even notice that Abbie and Angie are both smiling warmly at him until after his plate is loaded with eggs, bacon, and two large waffles that he really doubts he’s gonna be able to finish, but Peter usually steals bites from his plate when they eat together, so he doesn’t worry about it too much as he spins around and freezes upon noticing their stares. They don’t even try to act like they’re not staring, either, just smile wider as he asks, “What?”

“Nothin’.” Angie says, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Abbie giggles into the palm of her hand, and he knows they’re lying, but he just shrugs it off in favor of swiping a fork from the silverware drawer and sitting back down in the spot next to Peter, instantly shoveling a bite of eggs into his mouth. Angie huffs out some kind of laugh and shakes her head, sharing an amused smile with Abbie before pushing herself to her feet and announcing, “Alright, my little ducks. I’ll be back, okay?”

Speaking around his food, Harley asks her, “Where’re you goin’?”

Angie crinkles her nose, looks like she’s about to tell him not to talk with his mouth full, but then lets out a sigh instead, features becoming a bit more serious and stern. “I’m going to pick up the kids,” she tells him simply, picking up a mug of coffee and taking a long drink from it.

“Kids?” Harley questions, voice muffled as he quickly chews and swallows the eggs still in his mouth. He glances over at Abbie in confusion, but she’s just staring down at her own plate and pushing her food around with her fork silently. When he looks over at Peter, he finds that Peter is already looking at him, eyes a little bit wide and features worried, and that’s when Harley understands. He deflates a bit, looks back at his mom with a vague sense of betrayal, and lets out a heavy sigh. “Why? I don’t—”

“I know,” Angie cuts in, tightens her hold on her mug until her knuckles are white. “I don’t, either, but it’s… it’s a tough situation, and they’ve been holed up in Mel’s for way too long, just ‘cause they want to meet you two and get to know you. I’m not gonna stop them. It’s not my place, Harley.”

Harley sinks his teeth into his lower lip to stop himself from saying something harsh, because he’s not mad at his mom, he’s just mad in general, and he refuses to take it out on her. Instead, he just slumps in his seat, and he almost doesn’t hear it when Peter clears his throat and says, “I, uh- I don’t mean to be a bother, Miss Angie, but Harley said yesterday that he wanted to show me his favorite spots in Rose Hill today, and if- if that should be pushed back a few days or something, then that’s fine, I just was really looking forward to it.” As he says this, he reaches over and wraps his fingers around Harley’s wrist in a familiar and comforting gesture, and Harley instantly finds himself flashing Peter a small, grateful smile.

For a moment, Angie just considers this, tapping the pads of her fingers against her mug with a slightly furrowed brow and a frown. Abbie takes a bite of her pancake, waves her fork through the air to grab their attention, and then says, “We could all go. Lucy, Sam and Hannah would probably like a tour here, too.”

“No,” Harley says instantly, shaking his head back and forth with a clenched jaw. Peter gently rubs his thumb over Harley’s pulse point, and it helps, a little, but it doesn’t ease the frustration bubbling angrily in his gut. “I want to show my _boyfriend_ my favorite spots in Rose Hill. I don’t want them to be there.”

“Harley,” Angie tries, strained. “Honey, you should—”

“I should what?” Harley asks, dropping his fork onto his plate and suddenly feeling his appetite wither away. Angie just sighs, looks away, and it makes something in Harley twist. “What, Ma? What should I do? Should I act buddy-buddy with kids that I didn’t want to meet? I didn’t _ask_ for Dad to fuck off and have more kids, and there’s nothin’- there’s not- I don’t know what the _fuck_ you expect from me here!”

A heavy silence settles over the room, and if Peter wasn’t still gently holding onto his wrist and rubbing his thumb back and forth in a soothing gesture, Harley’s sure he would have already fled from the room. But he stays put, glares down at his too full plate of food he doesn’t think he’ll be able to bring himself to eat now, and he knows he’s being unnecessarily harsh but he’s livid and he doesn’t know how else to handle it. He thinks his mom’s never gonna respond, but then she lets out another sigh, this one more uneven and shaky and wavering at the end, and he just knows that she’s holding back tears and god, he hates himself for acting like this but he can’t stop himself and it’s, it’s—

Peter tightens his hold slightly, and Harley lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“I expect the same that I always expect from you,” Angie eventually says. “I expect you to do your best.”

Harley doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just finishes his breakfast in silence and tries not to flinch when the front door closes a few minutes later, signifying that his Ma has left the house and is still going through with bringing the half siblings here. As soon as she’s gone, he slumps to the side, leans against Peter with a heavy exhale that burns on it’s way out, and he thinks he’s starting to feel a bit more calm, a bit more like himself, when Abbie gets to her feet and sharply tells him, “You’re not the only one that’s upset, Harley. But you _are_ the only one acting like an _asshole_.”

And with that, only Peter and Harley are left in the kitchen, and Harley tries his best not to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> both of these chapters have only been between 7k and 8k words. is that bugging me? a little bit. do i want them to be 10k words? of course i do. am i gonna try and rewrite the chapters/add scenes/reword shit to make the chapters longer? absolutely not.

_The first time Harley went to a mechanics shop was when he was five years old._

_“You’ll like it, bud,” William had told him, buckling him into his car seat with a warm smile before shutting the door and rounding the car to get behind the wheel. The shop was only a ten, maybe fifteen minute walk away, but it was fairly cloudy at the time, the potential of raining hanging in the somewhat misty air, so William had opted to drive instead. Plus, Harley had a lot of energy, but a walk that far would be sure to wipe him out pretty quickly, and they were trying to ease him out of taking naps because he was starting kindergarten that fall. Harley didn’t mind, was always pretty happy to go on drives with his dad, so he simply swung his feet back and forth and babbled nonsense while staring wide eyed out the window until they pulled into a parking lot and put the car in park._

_Even at that age, Harley had a clear interest in how things worked, in the way things were built. He had a habit of trying to pull things apart and piece them back together, no matter how much his mother scolded him for it, but his father encouraged that little habit of his. In fact, after finding a disassembled TV remote for the third time in a month, William had gone out of his way to learn the proper way to rebuild it, and then he sat down with Harley and guided him through it, to make sure he really understood what he was doing and teaching him the things he hadn’t been able to figure out on his own._

_Bringing Harley to the mechanics shop had been an ongoing idea between William and Angie, because Angie knew of Harley’s interest, yes, but she didn’t really know if it would be a good idea. After a lot of discussion, weighing the pros and the cons, Angie decided that it wouldn’t hurt to take him once and see how it went, and William was over the moon to see Harley’s reaction._

_And Harley did not disappoint._

_“That’s an engine,” William told him, lifting Harley up to rest on his hip so that he could see into the open hood of a car. Robby Johnson, who ran the local junkyard on the far side of town but worked a few hours a week at the shop for spare cash, spotted them as they rounded the car and didn’t hesitate to wave them over with his free hand, his other arm elbow deep in the open hood of a different car._

_“Engine?” Harley repeated, not really knowing what the word meant – he knew, on some level, that an engine is what cars used, and that was why it was in the car, but past that, he was clueless._

_Robby Johnson grinned as the two of them came closer and, upon hearing Harley’s questioning tone, he simply nodded and said, “Yessir, Little Keener. This right here is the heart and soul of every car. You ever seen a car engine before, little man?” When Harley simply shook his head, Robby grinned even wider, nodded his head down towards the engine he was working on, and told him, “Well, pay attention, bud. I’ll give you a quick little tour of all the parts of an engine, how does that sound?”_

_Harley nodded excitedly, probably spouted out some overly excited exclamation, and then leaned so far forward that he nearly toppled out of his father’s arms. William only huffed a laugh and stood there, quiet and patient, as Harley, the most silent he had ever been up until that point, listened with the utmost focus to every little detail of the engine that Robby Johnson told him, and he never forgot a word._

 

 

 

 

“You’re taking me to meet a mechanic?” Peter asks, one brow quirking slightly. “I already know two.”

Harley rolls his eyes, tugs at the hem of his shirt to make sure it isn’t rising, and sticks his tongue out at Peter in a totally mature fashion. “I’m taking you to meet Robby,” he tells Peter simply, leaning his shoulder against the wall and keeping his eyes on Peter as he plops himself on the edge of Harley’s bed to tie his shoes. “He’s not just a mechanic. He’s the guy who taught me everything I know about cars.”

“Oh, so he’s, like, your super genius origin story?” Peter teases, though he does glance up at Harley with a specific sort of shimmer in his eyes, because it’s a pretty cool thing, being trusted enough to meet important people from Harley’s past. If there were anyone in Peter’s life that Harley hadn’t already met, he would gladly return the gesture when they get back to New York, but Peter’s never really had a whole lot of people, so there’s not really anyone left that have yet to meet Harley.

“In a way, I guess,” Harley answers, snickering lightly under his breath. “Robby showed me my first car engine when I was five, and after—”

_After my dad left—_

Harley clears his throat. “Once, um- once I was old enough to walk to and from school, he let me stop at the junkyard and work on old cars to practice, and I even managed to fix up some real hunks of junk. He said I was born to build, and he gives me five bucks whenever I see him. Pretty cool dude. You’ll like him, and you bet your ass he’s gonna think you’re the coolest person he’s ever met.”

“Really?” Peter pulls on his laces, makes sure they’re secure, then hops to his feet with a slightly furrowed brow. “Why? The most interesting part of me is my whole secret identity thing.”

“That’s probably the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Harley quips, lips tugging up into an amused, fond smile as Peter scoffs. He says nothing else, though, so Harley just bunches his shoulders up in some kind of shrug and tells him, “Robby’s obsessed with cities. He’s never been able to visit one, though, so he’s gonna talk your ear off about New York and city life. You’ll be his favorite person.”

Peter doesn’t look very convinced by that, but he doesn’t say anything about it, instead of smiles a bit and lets Harley take his hand and lead him through the hall and down the stairs, where the half siblings are all sitting somewhat awkwardly on the sofa and trying to make tense conversation with Abbie, who only really seems comfortable talking to Hannah, who is sitting next to her and is excitedly showing her pictures from Lucy’s phone and telling Abbie about them. Angie is in the kitchen, likely making more breakfast for the trio despite the fact that they seem well off enough to afford their own food, and Harley doesn’t even bother hiding his eye roll as he leads Peter towards the front door and calls out, “Ma, I’m takin’ Peter to meet Robby! We’ll be back soon!”

“Wait a second, please!” Angie calls back, and Harley honestly considers acting like he didn’t hear her, just because he doesn’t want to wait in the same room as the people he’s very strongly trying to avoid, but she’d just call him and tell him to come back to talk, and while he’s in Tennessee, she’s still in charge of him. So, with a heavy sigh, he complies, stilling by the door and only relaxing when Peter squeezes his hand. Harley sends him a slight smile, and he tries not to notice when Sam and Lucy both glance at their interlocked hands, at each other, and then back again.

It’s Lucy that speaks up, and Harley is starting to think she must be the oldest of the bunch, seeing as she’s the one who seems to take the most charge in conversation and such. She looks about Harley’s age, actually, maybe even a year or so older. Harley feels a twist in his gut at the thought. “So,” Lucy starts, voice a bit slow and frustratingly even, “I’m guessing you two are… together? Like, dating?”

For the first time since arriving, Peter looks just as wary about the halflings as Harley feels. “Yeah,” Harley answers simply, one brow raised in question. “Why? Does it bug you?”

“No,” Lucy says quickly, eyes going a bit wide at the implication. “No, it’s not- we just didn’t know.”

“Well, it’s not really your place to know,” Peter speaks up, his brows creased slightly as he tilts his head a bit to the left. Lucy blanches a bit at that, and Peter’s scrutinizing look softens, just a little. “No offense.”

Harley uses the hand that isn’t being held by Peter’s to lift it from side to side in a so-so motion. “I mean, I didn’t say it,” he muses, “but I kind of want the offense to be very much intended.” Instantly, Peter jams his elbow into Harley’s side, but Harley can see the way his lips twitch as he tries to hide a small smile.

“I’m bi,” Lucy says then, blunt and blatant and not really what either of them were expecting. “It’s just… this is Tennessee, you know? Not the most liberal place, so I’m not used to seeing queer couples.”

For a moment, Harley wracks his brain for something clever to say, something that doesn’t imply that he gives a shit about Lucy but also doesn’t come across as offensive towards her little sexuality reveal. Before he can come up with a response, his mom saves the day by stepping into the room, using a dish towel to dry her hands, likely because of doing the dishes beforehand. “Okay,” she says, her voice lilted a bit forcefully to sound upbeat and excited as she tosses the dish towel across her shoulder to rest there. “You two,” she gestures to Harley and Peter, “have until two thirty to look around, have a tour of the town, do whatever you want, and you get to do it by yourselves. But, at three, you’ll be going with Abbie and them—” she now gestures to the halflings, “—to the roller rink. Got it?”

Immediately, Harley crinkles his nose and shakes his head. “Ma, I don’t wanna—”

“You don’t have to hang out with them,” Angie assures him quickly. “You don’t have to talk to them, you don’t have to be near them, nothing. If you don’t want them in your life, that’s your choice, Harley, but Abbie gets a choice, too, and she’s choosing to try and get to know them. That means that you have to suck it up for a thirty minute drive, and then you and Peter can have fun roller skating and acting like they’re not there. Does that sound fair to you two?”

It’s not what Harley wants, but it’s an arrangement he can live with, he supposes. “Fine,” he sighs, only deflating a little bit, before turning to look at Peter. “Only if it’s fine with you, too, though.”

Of course, Peter just nods, wearing a polite smile. “Sounds great!”

Great isn’t the word that Harley would use, and he’s pretty sure _everyone_ in the room knows it, but Angie just nods her head and says, “It’s settled then,” before retreating back into the kitchen to do whatever it is she was doing before. Harley has to wonder when the last time she properly said goodbye to him was, remember that she hadn’t even said bye when she knew he was leaving, and he finds that he isn’t sure he wants to go digging into that rabbit hole right now, instead shoving the thoughts away, sticking his chin defiantly in the air, and tightening his hold on Peter’s hand before marching them out the front door, already feeling at least a hundred times lighter the very second that the two of them step outside.

 

 

 

 

Robby Johnson gives Harley the kind of hug that only a family member can give, secure and loving, being tall enough to lift him off the ground and sort of sway him back and forth. Harley laughs loudly, wriggles in his grasp with no real intention of escaping the embrace, and jokingly shouts, “Let me go, you asshole! I’m not a fucking toddler!”

“I know, I know,” Robby says, releasing Harley as soon as he’s got both feet on the ground, though he keeps him an arm’s length away, scans over him quickly, as if searching for injuries, distress, or maybe even just little changes that may have developed over the last few months. “I missed havin’ ya around, Little Keener! Hard to get shit done all by myself nowadays, and you made it a whole lot easier.”

Harley scoffs, waves a dismissive hand through the air. “That’s doubtful, Robs. You taught me pretty much everything I know, and you don’t look a day over thirty. But that’s not why I’m here.” Stepping back, Harley looks over his shoulder, sees that Peter is kind of hovering by the entrance in uncertainty, and holds out a hand to him with an encouraging little smile. Peter hesitates for a moment, but quickly steps forward, takes Harley’s offered hand in his, and dips his head in a silent little nod of greeting when Harley looks back at Robby and tells him, “This is my boyfriend, Peter. I met him in New York.”

As expected, Robby’s eyes brighten at the mention of the city, but he manages to keep most of his excitement at bay, instead just turning to Peter and asking, “You’re a city boy?”

“Uh, y-yeah, I guess,” Peter says, using his free hand to rub the back of his neck nervously, trying for a polite smile. “Born and raised in Queens. This is actually just my… third time out of New York, I think.”

“And you came to Rose Hill?” Robby questions, huffing out an incredulous little laugh, which dwindles pretty quickly when Peter instantly glances over at Harley, and the reason is quite clear – Peter came to Rose Hill, yes, but not because he’s all that interested in Tennessee. He came to Rose Hill to be with Harley. Robby seems to ponder this for a moment, then nods his head once and tells Harley, “Y’know, when I was pushin’ off those bigoted little shits that were beatin’ the shit outta you when you were younger, I just thought it’d buy me an invite to your future weddin’. Never thought you’d bring your boy here to meet me, but I gotta say, Little Keener, I sure am honored.” There’s barely enough time for Harley to flush with some kind of embarrassment before Robby is facing Peter again, this time with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes narrowed slightly. “You better be treatin’ my boy right, though, Mister Peter. I’m talkin’ about gettin’ his favorite cake for his birthday, and playin’ that one a cappella album he really likes durin’ the Christmas time, the one he always puts on repeat in December when he stops by.”

Peter looks over at Harley, brow cocked slightly in question, leading Harley to look down at the floor and scuff the toe of his shoe on the ground bashfully as he murmurs, “I just really like Pentatonix, okay?”

Making a mental note of that, Peter asks, “What’s your favorite kind of cake?” Because he’s Peter Parker and if he’s going to be making promises, he needs to make sure he has the information he needs so that he can keep any and all promises that he makes. Parker luck is shit, but Parker promises are sacred.

“Red velvet,” Harley says with a sigh, like he’s reluctant to be answering but knows that Robby would just answer for him if he didn’t do it himself. “And, before you ask, I like it with cream cheese frosting. But it doesn’t even matter, ‘cause my birthday’s not for—”

“Isn’t it tomorrow?” Robby cuts in, sounding genuinely curious as he tilts his head slightly to the side, scratching thoughtfully at his beard, clearly deep in thought. “Today’s… no, shit, today’s the twenty first, right? So not tomorrow, but it’s only a couple days away, isn’t it?”

Harley splutters for a moment, looking wide eyed at Robby in some kind of urgent betrayal, while Peter just blinks once in shock. “No,” Harley tries to say. “No, it’s- it’s not—”

But Robby just continues to murmur to himself. “My Ma’s is right after yours, I remember that, and hers is… hers is the twenty fifth, so… yours is the twenty… twenty third, right? June twenty third?”

The silence that follows is answer enough, and Harley can’t even bring himself to try looking in Peter’s direction, because this can’t have a good reaction, can it? Harley’s blatantly avoided saying when his birthday is, has kept it as quiet as possible, given vague (and generally false) hints about when it is without actually giving a date, and he really thought he’d somehow get away with it. Peter’s an understanding person, sure, but this is bound to make him upset, and Harley—

“You said I was a few months older than you,” Peter says, shockingly gentle and casual and not holding even a hint of offense or hurt or anything in his voice. Harley just looks at him, eyes somehow even wider than before, and sees that Peter just looks… contemplative, and considerate. “When we first met, you—”

“Yeah, I know,” Harley murmurs, clears his throat and looks down at the ground because he feels kind of like shit right now even if Peter doesn’t appear to be mad about it. “To be fair, I didn’t know when your birthday was when I said that, I just remembered Tony saying ours were kinda close, so I just guessed.”

Peter nods, as if that makes perfect sense and isn’t a half assed excuse to try and make Harley feel less guilty, and then he keeps his light tone as he asks, “Do you like celebrating your birthday?” Unsure of what else to do, Harley just sort of shrugs, because his answer isn’t no, but it definitely isn’t yes, either. Peter still seems satisfied despite that nonspecific response. “Okay. Are you okay with, like, _big_ birthday stuff? Like, surprise parties and shit?” Harley shakes his head. “What about smaller stuff?” Peter goes on. “Like, can I make you a cake, get you a present, maybe have dinner or something? Would that be okay?”

“Are you still gonna do it if I say no?” Harley questions, more curious than anything else. Most people kind of notice his discomfort towards his birthday and force him to celebrate, anyway, likely trying to get him to see that it _is_ a celebration, but he’s never had someone actually willing to ignore the day entirely.

Peter looks deadly serious as he meets Harley’s gaze. “If you don’t want to do, then I won’t.”

There’s so much of _something_ in his voice that Harley finds himself speechless for a minute, blinking once, twice, seeing that Robby looks a little surprised by the conviction of Peter’s tone, and then he clears his throat, shakes his head, and softly says, “Yeah, that’d be okay.”

“Cool.” Then, suddenly, Peter is grinning, looking back at Robby with some kind of excited glint in his eyes. “So, treat him right, make him his favorite cake for his birthday, and play Pentatonix during Christmas. Those are three promises I can keep. Anything else you want me to do, Mister Robby?”

Robby sort of squints at Peter, the ends up hip lips twitching into the hints of what could be a small smile or a slight frown, and Harley is so busy feeling in awe over this boy that he doesn’t deserve, that he’s so god damn lucky to have, that he almost misses it when Robby says, “You got a good one, Little Keener.”

Harley blinks a little, tightens his hold on Peter’s hand, and can’t even bring himself to voice the fact that he agrees – he got a good one, possibly even the best one, and he’ll never fully understand how.

 

 

 

 

There is one condition that Harley makes clear one him and Peter get back from visiting with Robby Johnson, and that condition is simple: he gets to drive, and Peter gets shotgun. Not only because the only other people capable of driving them are his mom, who isn’t going, and Lucy, who doesn’t know how to get there, but also because there’s six people squeezing into his Ma’s five person vehicle, and he doesn’t want either him or Peter to have to be crammed in the back seat with the halflings.

And Abbie, who appears to be only a little uncomfortable when her and Hannah have to find a way to share the middle seat, but that’s not Harley’s problem. He doesn’t help them try to fit, doesn’t offer any pointers, just happily chats to Peter about whatever comes to mind until everyone is buckled up and ready to go, and even then, he pays no mind to the people in the backseat of the car. He just holds Peter’s hand over the center console, lets Peter take the AUX cord to pick out what music they listen to, and he laughs loudly when Winter Wonderland / Don’t Worry Be Happy starts blasting from the speaker.

“It’s June, Peter,” he giggles, throwing an amused grin Peter’s way. “Robs said to play this shit during Christmas, not in the summer.”

Peter just shrugs, squeezes Harley’s hand a bit. “What can I say? I come prepared, plan ahead.”

Harley snorts. “Honey, no offense, but that’s not even a little bit true. You’re an unprepared disaster.”

“I resent that.”

When the song ends, Peter has another queued up, but he doesn’t keep playing the Christmas album, thankfully. It may be Harley’s favorite holiday music, but it isn’t the holidays, and he’d rather not start associating his favorite Christmas music to a somewhat awkward car ride with the very people he was hoping to avoid seeing for the rest of the week. Peter probably senses that, because Peter seems to have some weird kind of understand of the way Harley’s brain works (which is odd, because Harley isn’t sure how his own brain works half the time, but he’s not gonna complain), and he flashes Harley a soft sort of smile as Runaway by Bon Jovi starts to play instead.

They keep talking, the two of them, and when they aren’t talking, they’re singing along to whatever song is on, and neither of them pay even the smallest hint of attention towards the people sitting in the back of the car. Maybe that’s why neither of them notice when Abbie takes out her phone.

 

** abbie || @abbiekeener **

my brother can be a real jerk but him and his boyfriend are really cute

_[ Image Attached – Harley is behind the wheel, his eyes on the road, but he’s got a grin directed in Peter’s direction, while Peter is holding their intertwined fingers in the air, his own smile pressed to the back of Harley’s hand as the sun illuminates his eyes, which are looking at Harley with a clear softness. ]_

**_Liked by Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and 12 more_ **

 

By the time they reach the roller rink, Harley has pretty much forgotten entirely of the other people in the car, and he prides himself in not deflating at the reminder of their presence. He’s not here for them, he has to remind himself – he wanted to bring Peter to the roller rink before they went back to New York anyway, and this is just an unfortunate add on to that. Plus, his Ma told him that he doesn’t have to act like they’re there, that he can ignore them entirely once they get to the rink, so that’s exactly what he does, not acknowledging a single one of them as they climb out of the car, though he has the decency to wait until everyone’s gotten out before locking the doors and pulling Peter towards the entrance without waiting for the rest of them.

“Jesus, Harley, slow down,” Peter laughs, but he says it with a smile, his eyes sparkling as he lets Harley lead him through the doors, instantly steering them in the direction of the counter to get their skates. Harley is practically buzzing with excitement as he tells the worker their skate sizes, and he pays for the both of them before Peter even has the chance to reach for his wallet, which makes Peter splutter, but Harley just grins at him, a grin so wide and more genuine than any other smile he’s had since getting the phone call about his dad, and Peter can’t find it in himself to complain about not paying for himself.

“Y’know,” Harley muses, plopping down on one of the little benches to kick off his shoes and put on the skates, “I feel like you should be the one that’s, like, dragging me around, right? ‘Cause you’re kinda like… super strength, super speed, etcetera, etcetera. So, telling me to slow down is kind of pointless, right? Since you are more than capable of keeping up. You’re just being a baby about it.”

Peter scoffs, sitting next to Harley with his own skates in hand. “I’m not being a baby,” he defends simply and a little bit weakly, too. “I just do enough running, okay? If I can slow down, I’m gonna slow down.”

Harley grins, mischievous and bright and he doesn’t look when Abbie leads the halflings into the room, doesn’t shift his focus because he quite likes having all his attention on Peter, and he says, “Well, you’re gonna have to deal with it, ‘cause we’re gonna be skatin’ real fast, sweetheart.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ll be skating faster than you,” Peter taunts, setting aside his shoes and lacing up his skates with a side eye half-smirk aimed in Harley’s direction. Harley rolls his eyes, but opts not to respond as he finishes tying his own skates, rolling his feet back and forth once to make sure the laces don’t feel too loose or too tight, and then carefully stands, having to hold his arms out for a moment as his body remembers the proper way to maintain balance on roller skates. Peter watches him teeter slightly, bites back a laugh as he holds out a hand and rests it on Harley’s hip to keep him upright, and tries not to sound as amused as he clearly is when he asks, “Are you sure you know how to skate? You can’t even stand.”

“Fuck _off,_ Parker,” Harley huffs, swatting Peter’s hand off of him with a half hearted glare that Peter only snickers at, getting to his feet in one swift move, not even hesitating or looking close to losing his balance. Harley glares harder, but he glares with a smile. “What, is super balance part of your skill set?”

Peter shrugs. “Probably part of the, like, enhanced agility, or something. It’s harder for me to fall than it is for me to not fall, ‘cause my Spidey sense goes off if it looks like I’m gonna lose my balance.”

God, that’s so cool. Harley doesn’t say that, just rolls his eyes again and grumbles a half assed complain when Peter takes him by the hand and helps him skate forward. “I swear to god I know how to skate,” he points out, only sounding a little whiney. “It’s just been a while, okay? Give me a minute to remember.”

“Who’s to say that I won’t want to keep holding your hand?”

Harley falters, considers this, then decidedly says, “As long as you know I can skate on my own, fine.”

Peter just shrugs again without a response, instead watching as Harley carefully maneuvers forward, getting a feel of how to move again. It’s like muscle memory, but his muscle memory is running a little slow, so it’s a familiar feeling, but it’s taking a moment for the familiarity to really kick in. The first few minutes are a little wobbly, especially once they manage to actually get on the roller rink and are no longer skating on the carpet, which has more traction and isn’t as easy to fall on, but Harley gets the hang of it after about five minutes, thanks to Peter’s genuine encouragement as they take a few slow laps around the rink, and when Peter grins and asks, “You ready to speed up?” Harley just tugs him in, kisses him quickly, and then releases his hold on Peter’s hand before taking off to go around the rink again.

 

** abbie || @abbiekeener **

someone should hire me to take their wedding photos

_[ Image Attached – Peter and Harley’s intertwined hands are barely visible due to the blur of someone skating past the camera, Harley’s other hand clutching onto Peter’s shirt while Peter’s is gently cupping the side of Harley’s face, the two of them kissing under the flashing lights of the roller rink. ]_

**_Liked by May Parker, ned((:, michelle, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and 42 more_ **

 

 

 

 

The day is going pretty great, to be completely honest.

Sure, Harley still isn’t all that happy about having the halflings there, but none of them really try to talk to him, and when they do, he makes it clear that he doesn’t want to talk to them, so it gets dropped pretty quickly. Peter and him skate until they’re exhausted, then load up on two giant milkshakes and more sugar than should be legally allowed, and then they skate until the sugar rush has mostly worn off. By that point, Abbie and Sam are chatting pleasantly while Hannah is practically asleep on top of Lucy, the four of them clearly ready to leave, so Peter kindly tells them that they’re gonna head back while Harley keeps pretending like they aren’t there, making sure that Peter gets shotgun again before getting behind the wheel, giving Peter the AUX chord and feeling that fond joy bubbling in his chest.

The drive is thirty minutes of music and singing along and holding Peter’s hand over the center console because he doesn’t like how empty his hand feels when Peter isn’t holding it, and he hears the conversation coming from the back seat, but he doesn’t acknowledge it unless it’s Abbie asking him how much longer until they get home, which he always answers with a simple estimate of time before focusing back on the road, taking the next necessary turn, and belting out the lyrics to Queen.

The day is going pretty great, until William Keener’s funeral is brought up again.

Despite Harley’s clear distaste and Peter’s general disinterest disguised as a forced sort of kindness whenever he gets drawn into conversation, Angie has the three halflings stay for dinner, ordering pizza from the only pizza place in Rose Hill that actually delivers and putting on a movie in the living room for everyone to watch. Harley doesn’t touch the pizza because he seems to lose his appetite with the halflings around, and Peter makes his way through two slices before he can’t seem to stomach anymore, and Harley thinks, had he eaten anything, it would have come up instantly when Angie carefully asks, “So, the funeral is tomorrow, right?”

She’s looking at him, the action not very subtle. Lucy nods. “Yes, ma’am, it is. And you’re all still more than welcome to come, if you want to, obviously. It starts at one in the afternoon.”

“Harley,” Angie says, slow and careful, still looking at him, and now drawing everyone else’s attention to him, too. His jaw clenches. “Have you given any thought about whether you’re gonna go or not? Abbie and I will be there, and Peter, I’m sure, will be by your side the whole time, if you decide to—”

“I’m not fucking going,” Harley interrupts, grinding his teeth in frustration as he tries to keep himself from glaring as his own mother, who only means well but is only making the situation so much worse.

Sam clears his throat, and Harley’s hands clench into fists at his sides as he asks, “Why, though? I mean, he was your dad, too. Why wouldn’t you go to your own dads funeral?”

Shifting in his seat slightly, Peter tries to cut in, telling Sam, “Maybe you should just—”

“No, I’ll answer,” Harley says, voice light with a faux upbeat sort of energy, leveling Sam with a look so cold and dead eyed that it makes Sam look away in discomfort, and Harley’s tone drifts into something angry and hurt as he goes on with, “You _just_ lost your dad, but I lost him _ten fucking years ago,_ when he left us for you. What good would going to his funeral do? I already mourned him once. I’m not doing it a second time. That’s more than he deserves after what he did. So, no, I’m not going. Not a chance in hell.”

It isn’t Sam who speaks after that – he just looks down, features strained and a crease between his brows as he lets out a long, slow sigh. Lucy does speak, though, and she sounds like she’s barely containing some kind of burning fury when she says, “Our dad was a good dad, Harley.”

“Oh, I agree,” Harley tells her, huffing out a laugh that lacks humor. “He was the best dad, until the day that he said he was going to get some scratchers and never fucking came back.”

“Look,” Lucy says, properly fuming now. “I get you have issues with him leaving you, and I’m sorry about that, but he died, Harley! He’s dead! Now he won’t be at Sam’s graduation, or Hannah’s. Hell, he barely even made it to mine, because he was so weak that leaving the hospital was a risk. So you need to get off your high horse and realize that it’s not all about you. All of us are hurting.”

Already, Peter is looking at Harley with a horrible sadness in his eyes, because Harley is frozen to the spot, lips slightly parted in shock and heart stuttering in his chest, ice freezing in his brain. Angie silently gets up and leaves the room, and even Abbie appears to be stunned by what Lucy said. Harley clears his throat, bites on his inner cheek until he tastes blood on his tongue, and then he croaks out, “Are you… you… you’re older than me?”

A strange expression crosses Lucy’s face. “You didn’t know that?”

“You’re older than me,” Harley says again, no longer a question. The center of his chest aches, his lungs don’t feel like they’re working, and he doesn’t even notice the tears stinging in his eyes. “You’re older than me, and he… he was in the hospital. He knew he was going to die, didn’t he? He knew before it happened, and he still didn’t… he never… are you fucking kidding me? This can’t be- I can’t—"

“Okay, that’s enough,” Peter interrupts, pushing his paper plate with an untouched slice of pizza out of his lap and sliding off the couch, kneeling in front of Harley and ducking his head to connect their gazes. Harley just blinks at him, teary eyed and feeling like his world is falling apart around him, leaning into it when Peter gently cups his face in his hands, leans in just enough, until all Harley can see is him. “You’re gonna go to your room, okay?” he tells Harley gently, brows pinched and features concerned. “I’m gonna make you something other than pizza, because you need to eat something, and then we can talk about it if you want to, or we can just put on a movie and forget about it for a little bit. Does that sound okay?”

He asks it in a way that makes it clear that Harley can say no, that Harley can do whatever the hell he wants and Peter will stand by him while he does, but he’s trying to come up with the easiest way to handle this, the best way to give Harley space and give him the chance to process his own thoughts before trying to spit them out loud. Harley nods, sucks in a sharp breath, and then murmurs, “Yeah, that’s okay,” because he thinks that what Peter suggested is exactly what he needs to not spiral into a black hole.

Peter nods once, a bit curt and tense, and presses a kiss to Harley’s cheek before helping him stand and watching him until he disappears up the stairs, still looking dazed and broken. As soon as he hears Harley’s bedroom door click shut, he whirls around, the most pissed off look that Peter Parker is capable of burning in his eyes as he hisses, “Come with me,” before marching into the kitchen.

By the time Lucy and Sam walk into the kitchen, Abbie and Hannah staying in the living room because Hannah’s still so young and doesn’t understand what’s going on and Abbie has clearly grown a fond sort of attachment to her, Peter is in the middle of buttering up the bread for the grilled cheese that he’s making. Grilled cheese used to be the traditional Parker food when you were sick, but he kind of like the idea of making it a new tradition for him and Harley. It’s a nice little thought in the middle of his stormy, dark clouds, unbearably loud brain, but the nice little thought disappears as soon as Lucy clears her throat and warily asks him, “Why did you want us to follow you, Peter?”

“I want to talk to you,” Peter tells them simply, not taking his eyes off of the task at hand, sounding and looking a lot more calm than he had when he was still in the living room. When neither Lucy nor Sam speaks up to respond, Peter takes the initiative, now just waiting for the pan to heat up enough to actually grill the grilled cheese sandwiches on, and he props his hip against the edge of the counter, crosses his arms over his chest, and cocks a brow at them to ask, “Do you realize how shitty you’re being to him?”

There’s no need to clarify who he’s talking about, because there’s only one person they could be talking about. Sam looks away, shuffles his feet awkwardly, and has to stare uncomfortably down at the floor to hide his flinch when Lucy lets out some kind of quiet scoff and says, “You don’t get it. We—”

“Lost your dad,” Peter finishes, bobbing his head in a nod. Lucy narrows her eyes, scrutinizing and unsure, and Peter gives her a crooked smile as he says, “Yeah, so did I. My mom, too, when I was four, and my Uncle Ben, who was like a dad to me after him and Aunt May took me in, just a few years ago.” Lucy’s features go slack with shock, and Sam looks up, gives Peter a wide eyed, speechless sort of look, and Peter just cocks his head to the side and asks, “You really think I don’t get it? ‘Cause I _do_ get it. I’ve been through it more than once, and it’s never gotten easier, but you want to know what I don’t get?”

“I…” Lucy trails off, shakes her head slightly, crestfallen.

Peter nods up at the ceiling, takes on a much softer tone as he says, “I don’t get how he feels right now, and neither do you. Because losing a parent sucks, that’s something we can all agree on, but none of us had a parent leave us like we’re nothing. Harley already lost your dad when he left, and now he lost him again, even though he never really had him back. And, more than that, he just found out that you’re older than him, which means that your dad had you first, before he had Harley, and he left Harley and Abbie to go back to you guys. No offense, but your dad was kind of a dick for doing that.”

“That’s not fair,” Sam tries to say, quiet and shameful and meek.

“Maybe it’s not,” Peter shrugs, turning back around to start grilling the first sandwich, because he’s starting to get a little mad and he doesn’t want to say something too harsh, and focusing on getting this food done helps to ease his mind. Plus, the sooner it’s done, the sooner he can get to Harley, and Peter is kind of itching to check on his boyfriend right now. “But whether or not it’s fair doesn’t matter,” he continues, keeping his back to them and trying not to think too hard about just how badly he wants to run upstairs. “What matters is that, no matter how good of a dad he was to you, he still left his other kids. He didn’t even get ahold of them when he was in the hospital, dying. He didn’t even try. And I know how you guys feel, I know how it feels to lose a parent that you love, but none of us can say what it feels like to be abandoned by one, to mourn them because they’re gone, and then to be expected to mourn them again. You keep treating him like he’s in the wrong here, but he’s not. None of you are.” He looks over his shoulder, meets Lucy’s eyes with a steady gaze, and tells her, “You said it yourself. All of you are hurting, but he’s feeling a different pain than you. Don’t be a dick to him because of it.”

There’s a long, tense silence that follows after that, Peter facing forward again to finish up the grilled cheese sandwiches and plating them quickly, wishing that there was some tomato soup, too, but not wanting to waste another minute searching the kitchen just to fine some. He absently notes that it isn’t really the most nutritious of meals, but comfort food trumps healthy food sometimes – he’ll just ask Miss Angie for some fruit with breakfast tomorrow, and hopefully that’ll balance it out a bit. Maybe. Or not.

Picking up the plates, Peter turns around, glances between Lucy and Sam with a deep breath, and then he simply tells them, “I’ll talk to him, try and see why he doesn’t want to go to the funeral, and if he changes his mind, then I’ll go with him. But if he doesn’t want to say goodbye to a dad that he already had to suffer the loss of, then neither of you have the right to judge him for it. If either of you really want him to give you the light of day or try and create a bond, you should probably start by being decent human beings and respecting his choice, whether or not you understand or agree with it.”

And with that, he makes his way upstairs.

 

 

 

 

“I don’t know,” Harley says, soft and unsure and timid, picking lightly at the last of his grilled cheese and keeping his eyes trained solely on Peter’s laptop, playing the next episode of Criminal Minds that he honestly can’t remember any details about. Peter doesn’t push him to say more, just scoots impossibly closer, even though they’re pressed together already, and he waits as Harley sorts through his thoughts. “I think I do wanna go,” he admits after a moment, a crease between his brows, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth and shaking his head slightly. “But I also don’t want… I don’t want to go for him, you know? I want to go for me, ‘cause… ‘cause I never got the chance to say bye before he left me.”

Peter nods slowly, rubs his thumb lightly over the back of Harley’s hand. “Closure,” he says.

“Yeah,” Harley breathes. “Yeah, I… I guess so. Something like that.”

“If you want to go, or if you don’t want to go, I’ll be with you,” Peter assures him. “Okay?”

Harley doesn’t respond for a long moment, but when he does, it’s with the slightest hint of a smile, and he quietly tells Peter, “I can’t believe you’re giving up a week of Spider-Manning just to be here.”

For a moment, Peter falters, but then he chuckles, squeezes Harley’s hand once, and murmurs, “I wouldn’t be able to be Spider-Man knowing you were dealing with this alone.” And it’s true, he knows, but that doesn’t stop the same gut churning guilt that rips at his insides whenever he thinks about all the people who need Spider-Man, who aren’t being saved this very second.

But he shouldn’t think about that now, because this isn’t about Peter, or Spider-Man, or anything like that. This is about Harley and making sure that he’s okay, that he’s got someone in his corner, supporting him, fighting for him if needed, standing up for him if desired, and whatever else Peter can do to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoiler alert: peter shoving away his own anxiety about not being able to be spider-man will only serve to bite him in the ass, but harley is as understanding as peter, so it won't lead to a fight, just some mutual hurt/comfort cuteness that i was gonna add to this chapter but decided to push back a chap or two.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a reminder that this fic takes place in 2018 bc infinity war never happens and you cant yell at me about how june 23 was actually a sunday because last year june 23 was a saturday so ha (i don't think anyone would have yelled at me but i would have yelled at myself)

“How did the talk with the Morales’s go?”

“Hm?” Tony hums, clearly distracted by whatever he’s working on. Peter can hear the sound of metal scraping against the table top, and his curiosity almost changes the subject just to ask what’s being tinkered with today, but he holds the question back and listens closely as Tony goes on. “Oh, it went fine. Took a little bit of convincing and pulling out the paperwork and checking the legality and everything, but then I made it clear that we want Miles to shadow you and Harley and learn to become an intern later down the line, and I even spouted out some of that cliché bullshit of how smart he is and how beneficial it would be to have him in the tower, blah, blah, blah—”

“Mister Stark,” Peter interrupts, huffing out a chuckle. “Running out of time, here.”

There’s a whoosh of air, and Peter is pretty sure that it was the sound of Tony waving his hand dismissively through the air. “Fine, whatever, I’ll keep it simple. Long story short, we got his folks on board, and he’ll start shadowing you two when you get back to New York. That sound good to you?”

It’s pretty much exactly what Peter was hoping for, so he bobs his head in a nod despite knowing that Tony can’t see him and answers, “Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you, Mister Stark.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m amazing and you love me,” Tony dismisses, though there’s a smile in his voice.

“That might be a little bit of a stretch,” Peter snickers, propping his shoulder against the wall and looking over towards the entrance of the church. Angie and Abbie are both talking softly, wearing the appropriate funeral attire of knee length black dresses and forlorn expression, while Harley stands a few feet away in one of his nicer pairs of jeans, a white shirt, and a black blazer over it – his compromise for dressing nicely, as he doesn’t want to give his father the satisfaction of wearing his suit to his funeral. His shoulders are hunched in on himself, arms crossed over his chest and tucked into his sides, like he’s giving himself some sort of hug, and Peter is aching to end this call and go back to him, be the anchor he needs, but there’s another question burning the back of his throat that he feels he needs to ask before he can go on with the day. So, even as he taps his foot impatiently, he still asks, “Have, uh- have the crime rates gone up the past few days? Specifically in Queens?”

There’s a long moment where he gets no response, and he’s just starting to think that Tony ended the call when he hears a strained sort of sigh. “You don’t really want to know the answer to that, kid.”

Peter feels a lump form in his throat that he struggles to swallow. “I need to know, Mister Stark. Please.”

Another sigh, this one more resigned, before Tony tells him, “Yeah, they have, but I’ve been keeping an extra eye on things while you’re gone to make sure nothing major happens while Spider-Man isn’t here to help, alright? So don’t you _dare_ get all guilty and blame yourself  for this shit, you’re allowed to have breaks, and you know for a fact that you’d rather be there with Harley than here right now. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Peter breathes, even though he kind of stopped listening after _yeah, they have._ He nods again, knows Tony still can’t see him, and clears his throat. “Yeah, uh- yeah, I got it. Thanks, Mister Stark. I, uh… I gotta go now, the funeral’s about to start, but I’ll let you know how it goes later, okay?”

“Pete—”

“Bye, Mister Stark.”

Peter ends the call before Tony can fit in another word, and he knows he’ll probably be hearing about that later – whether it’s from Tony himself, or from May, who will inevitably hear about it – but he can’t bring himself to care all that much right now. His brain’s a bit preoccupied because people are getting hurt and Spider-Man isn’t in New York to help, and god, he knows, logically, that it isn’t his fault, knows that him being in Rose Hill and taking a week off from being Spider-Man doesn’t actually make him the one to blame, but it feels like it when the realization twists his gut and makes his lungs ache and it—

He stops himself there, knowing that these thoughts will lead to him spiraling, and that’s not something he can afford right now, not when Harley is quite literally ten feet away and about to step into the funeral of the father that abandoned him. Right now, he needs to suck it up and be an unwavering figure of support by Harley’s side, because he’s starting to feel like he just might be the only person in Rose Hill that’s standing in Harley’s corner here – besides Robby Johnson, of course, who had stopped by the Keener’s house this morning to give Harley a tight hug and tell him that he can’t go to the funeral, but if he could, he’d be there for Harley in a heartbeat. Peter’s glad that Harley had Robby when he was still living in Rose Hill, and he’s glad that he still has Robby now. He makes a mental note of talking to Tony about maybe trying to set something up so that Robby can visit them in the city someday.

For now, though, he just straightens his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and makes his way over to Harley, who is still standing a few feet away from everyone else and hugging himself silently. Peter nudges their shoulders together when he reaches him, tries for a gentle sort of smile when Harley looks up. As soon as Harley sees that it’s Peter, he drops his arms to his sides and intertwines their fingers, clutching Peter’s hand like a lifeline, voice coming out in a bit of a croak when he asks, “What’d Tony say?”

“Miles’s parents agreed to the internship shadowing thing,” Peter tells him, then squeezes Harley’s hand once, with just enough strength to try and draw Harley out of his head. “How are you feeling?”

Harley takes a moment to think before slowly answering, “Better, but… but also worse. It’s really weird. Like… I know I need to do this, I know I’ll regret it if I don’t, but I still really fucking want to leave, you know? ‘Cause everyone in this damn church is gonna be comin’ up to me and sayin’ that they’re sorry for my loss, but it’s not really _my_ loss, right? My loss was fuckin’ ten years ago, but this is… this is like closure, like you said. This is something kinda like closure, to say bye to him and move on with it.” Peter doesn’t respond yet, only nods along as Harley sorts through his own thoughts and tries to piece together a coherent explanation of what’s going on in his brain. After another moment of hesitation, Harley’s brows so furrowed and shoulders so tense that it almost looks painful, he carefully continues. “I think… I think I’m okay, and I think I’m gonna be okay after this, too, but I have this feeling, like… it’s in my bones, you know? And it’s so heavy, and it makes me feel like this is a huge mistake, that bein’ here, doin’ this, is just somethin’ I’ll wish I never did. Does that… I mean, does that make any sense?”

“It does,” Peter assures him, and he’s being honest, because that bone deep dread is something he’s quite familiar with, something he feels more often than a person ever should. He felt it when his parent’s never came home, felt it when Skip went from this cool older brother figure to someone Peter couldn’t bare to be around, when he woke up the morning after the spider bite with such a horrible pain in his stomach that he was convinced he was dying, when he saw the glint of a gun pointed toward Uncle Ben and couldn’t bring himself to do a damn thing about it, when the ferry started to split in two and he was trying to hold it together with nothing but his webs and his own strength, when Tony took his suit, when Toomes opened the door at Liz’s house, when the building fell on him and he couldn’t breathe, when he was trying to get the plane to turn so that it wouldn’t crash into the city, when Aunt May walked in on him wearing the suit and he was so sure that she’d try to take Spider-Man away from him, when Mandy Morales was shot and killed in front of him and he wasn’t enough to save her, and, most recently, when Miles Morales, a twelve year old kid from Brooklyn, had seen Peter and Harley holding hands, remembered seeing Harley holding hands with Spider-Man, and had connected the dots with so much ease that it was almost terrifying to witness. Peter’s throat feels dry. “It makes sense, Harley. I get it.”

And it isn’t much of a reassurance, but the reminder that yeah, Peter definitely understands what loss feels like, seems to be enough to let Harley breathe, the tension in his shoulders loosening, the crease between his brow becoming a little less prominent, and he nods a bit, some kind of determination now written over his features as he looks over to where Angie and Abbie are now making their way inside, the large clock on the church striking one, and Peter is taken, for a moment, with just how strong Harley looks like this. The summer sun is bearing down on them, and Peter, who hadn’t thought to pack anything too fancy, feels like he’s kind of melting in his own jeans and the dark blue blazer that Angie had managed to dig up for him, but Harley is from here, is used to the heat, and the sun only serves to illuminate the perseverance, the anger, the durability, and the pure power that Harley Keener holds. Peter feels a bit breathless watching the way different emotions flicker through his gaze at lightning speed, and he feels inspired by it, in a way, when Harley looks back to Peter and says, “Let’s go inside.”

Harley doesn’t hesitate once as they walk up the steps, and Peter is blown away.

The funeral itself is fairly simple, with family and friends of William Keener sitting with teary eyes and bowed heads and the occasional laugh when whoever is speaking tells a funny story. Angie and Abbie sit in the front, next to Lucy, Sam, Hannah, and their mother, but Peter and Harley go to the very back, multiple rows separating them from everyone else, and when they see the awkward tension on Angie’s features as she makes polite conversation with the halflings mom, Harley leans over and pitches his voice into an unnecessary whisper to tell Peter, “I think that’s Brianna Marsh. My dad told me about her once, said something about how they were high school sweethearts that just couldn’t make it work, but then he said he was glad they didn’t ‘cause then he never would’ve met Ma. Startin’ to realize that was bullshit.”

Peter thinks Harley is saying this with malice and anger, but then Harley lets out a little laugh, and when Peter looks at him, he can see genuine amusement in his features. “You’re not mad about that?”

“Nah,” Harley shrugs. “Sounds about right, actually. Not sure what else I expected.”

Despite the fact that they are quite literally at a funeral, Peter can’t stop his lips from twitching up into a slight smile at the crooked sort of grin spreading across Harley’s features. Still, he schooled his own features into something more appropriate for the situation and says, “Pretty sure it’s considered rude to be laughing at a time like this, Harley.”

“Yeah, well, you ever hear that one dumb joke about putting the _fun_ in funeral? ‘Cause that’s my goal.”

And, really, the inappropriately loud bark of laughter that Peter lets out at that isn’t his fault, but that doesn’t stop half of the people in the church from turning around and glaring at him. Harley can’t help but snicker as Peter instantly claps a hand over his mouth and shrinks in his seat, trying to become invisible from the rest of the room, but Harley just grins, still laughing lightly, and waves at the people looking his way, a strange sort of smug delight bubbling in his gut as people recognize him and quickly turn away with wide eyes, likely feeling awkward knowing that he’s the son that William didn’t raise.

Harley turns his grin to Peter once everyone stops looking at them, and he doesn’t bother listening as the priest starts his long speech about William Keener, loving father and husband, just slumps down until his head is level with Peter’s, but he does keep his voice soft when he murmurs, “I have an idea.”

“Is it gonna make a bunch of middle aged southern people glare at me again?” Peter asks, voice somewhat muffled by the hand still placed over his mouth. Harley just smiles wider, reaches over to tug at Peter’s wrist lightly until he lets his hand fall to his lap, but when Harley starts to lean in, Peter pulls back, eyes going wide with realization. “Wha- _here?_ Harley, we’re at your dads _funeral_. I don’t think—”

“Eh.” Harley waves a dismissive hand through the air. “Funeral, shmuneral. It’s not like I’m trying to seduce you in the back of a church. I’m just very fragile right now and want to kiss my boyfriend.”

He says this with his eyes widened into some sort of faux innocence, and Peter has to bite back a laugh because Harley has a certain way with sarcasm that never fails to make him giggle. “Fine,” he relents, and he initiates the kiss this time, keeps it quick and brisk and pulls away with a smile, holding up a hand to stop Harley from trying to lean back in for more. “That’s it for now, okay? I don’t want a random Christian grandma to have us thrown out because she saw us doing stuff.”

“Doing stuff?” Harley repeats, rolling his eyes with clear amusement glinting in his eyes. “Honey, you can’t seriously tell me that you wouldn’t find it hilarious to piss off a bunch of homophobic Tennessee assholes by making out in a church. That’s, like, the best kind of story to have as a queer couple!”

“I—” Peter stops, because he actually would find that pretty funny, but he also thinks that Harley might just be deflecting the situation a bit here, and he’s not too sure that it’s the best idea to just let him distract himself in such a public way. “Maybe,” he ends up saying, quickly cutting in before Harley can respond. “But maybe not… maybe not right now? We could do that Sunday, when people are actually here to go to church, not to… you know. Mourn someone. Your dad. It just… it feels weird. And, like, I’m here for you, obviously, and if you want to cause a scene or leave or whatever, I’m gonna help, but maybe just…”

“Just not make out at my dads funeral,” Harley finishes, nodding his understanding, and, thankfully, his smile is still genuine, even if it isn’t as wide as it had been before. “Sorry. But I’m holding you to that Sunday thing. We’re leaving Tuesday night, and I wanna cause as much chaos as I can before we go.”

Usually, Peter’s goal is to avoid chaos, to contain it, prevent it, because Parker’s seem to be a chaos magnet, but maybe that’s part of why he ended up with Harley in the first place. Harley seems to live and breathe chaotic energy, and he enjoys it, too, and maybe chaos can’t be all that bad if it sometimes results in relationships such as theirs. Peter sinks his teeth into his lower lip, glances up at the podium, around the room, makes sure no one is looking their way, and then leans over to kiss Harley a second time, drawing it out a little bit longer, before pulling back with a grin. “As much chaos as you want.”

Harley’s eyes glimmer with a million different things, but he doesn’t reply, just faces forward and leans into Peter as Peter wraps an arm around his shoulder and tucks him into his side, and that bone deep, heavy sort of dread still churns angrily within Harley’s stomach, but he just leans his head against Peter’s shoulder and listens as people go up to talk about William, and the heaviness feels a little easier to carry.

 

 

 

 

It’s not part of the plan, but seeing as the funeral is barren of any sort of casket, it shouldn’t really be all that shocking when Angie approaches them after people get up to leave and tells them that they’re going to the graveyard to visit William’s actual grave. Apparently, they hadn’t been invited to the burial, which had taken place a few days before Harley and Peter flew in, and something about that makes Harley grind his teeth in some sort of frustration, but he just smiles politely at his Ma and tells her that they’re gonna go get something to eat and will visit the graveyard themselves before heading home. Peter doesn’t interject himself into the conversation, only silently obverses the interaction as Angie lets out a sigh, looking as though she wants to protest, but inevitably leaves it at that and walks away. Harley looks a little bit like a kicked puppy when she does, and Peter has to bite his tongue to keep quiet about it.

They go to a diner, over on the very edge of Rose Hill, one that Harley swears by and insists has the best milkshakes he’s ever tasted, and Harley seems to be fine, still kind of laughing and snickering and hooking his ankle over Peter’s under the table as they eat their burgers in peace. The diner has a vintage sort of feel, and Harley seems oddly comfortable there, which is quickly explained when he tells Peter, “This is where Ma works. She was a server for a long time, but she got promoted to, like, a manager or something. That’s why I was able to finally go to New York, ‘cause I knew she’d be makin’ enough money to be able to keep her and Abbie above the water. They didn’t need me doin’ random work around town for spare cash anymore, y’know? And she said that she could tell I wanted to leave Tennessee, so she told me that they’d be okay and that I could go where I needed to go. So, I went to New York.”

“To Tony,” Peter says, nodding slightly and taking a sip of the (rightfully hyped up) chocolate milkshake he had ordered with his meal. “Neither of you said any specifics when you showed up, all I knew was that you were from Tennessee, you knew Mister Stark because of the whole Mandarin fiasco, and you had better opportunities in New York than you did here. But that makes sense, I guess. With how much you care about your family, it’s not hard to imagine you doing odd jobs to help pay the bills.”

Harley purses his lips, uses his straw to stir his milkshake idly before swiping up a fry, using it to gesture vaguely through the air as he says, “When you can’t afford basic food, you do something about it.”

Peter just smiles, kind of sad and understanding. “Yeah, I know what that’s like. May lost her job at the last hospital she worked at because of some budget cuts or whatever, and she had enough savings to keep us afloat while she found another job, but there were a few weeks where we didn’t really have any food, and this was after Ben died, but before I met Mister Stark, so I didn’t really have anyone to go to about it other than Ned. He tried bringing me spare food at school and stuff, but I ended up getting a sort of temporary job at Delmar’s so we could at least have some stuff to snack on, y’know?”

“You weren’t friends with MJ then?” Harley asks, head tilting slightly to the side as he tries to fit this information into the timeline of events that Peter has told him about. Before Tony, after Ben – around early 2016, then, likely late winter or early spring. It must have been cold. Harley wonders if they were able to afford to keep their heater on during that time, or if they were freezing their asses off for a bit.

“No, not yet,” Peter shakes his head. “I mean, we knew her, obviously, had known her since freshman year started, but we still just called her Michelle, and she sometimes sat at our table during lunch, but she didn’t really talk to us that much. It wasn’t until after the Homecoming stuff happened that she started hanging out with us more and told us to call her MJ, and then she really became best friends with us after she found out about the whole… y’know. Spidey stuff. So, no, but I actually do remember her randomly giving me a sandwich at lunch once or twice during those few weeks, so maybe she knew, somehow.”

“She seems to know everything,” Harley muses, tossing the fry into his mouth with a slight smile. “Like, it’s kind of terrifying. Ned wasn’t kidding when he said she’s like a mini Pepper. Too much power.”

The rest of their meal progresses similarly, with some jokes and light laughing and the occasional allusion to heavier topics that they don’t really bother to linger on. As the minutes go by, however, and as their plates empty, their milkshakes disappear, Harley starts to get more and more quiet, until he isn’t really speaking at all, staring down at his barren plate with a guarded expression. He doesn’t look away until Peter reaches over, bigoted Tennessee be damned, and place a hand over Harley’s, and when he does look at Peter, he appears dazed, lost in his head. “We don’t have to go,” Peter tells him. “I’m a good liar when I have to be. We can just tell your mom we went and leave it at that.”

It looks like Harley is considering this, but he slowly shakes his head. “I need… I think I need to see it.”

Peter squeezes Harley’s hand and nods. “Okay. But if you change your mind—”

“I’ll tell you,” Harley promises, getting to his feet and pulling out his wallet, though Peter manages to beat him to it this time, taking out some spare cash from the last time he offered to help out at Delmar’s (he doesn’t need to anymore, but Mister Delmar gives him fifty bucks every time, and it’s a good way to always have some cash on hand without having to ask Aunt May for it) and leaving the money on the table as he follows Harley’s lead in standing up. It looks like Harley is considering fighting this, but they talked about it once, about how it’s dumb to argue over who pays for what, so he just takes Peter’s hand and tries for a tense version of his normal smile. “You ready to say hi to my dad?”

There’s not much that Peter can think to say, so he just squeezes Harley’s hand back and says, “Lead the way, Keener,” and he willingly follows as Harley guides him outside and starts walking down the street, because Angie is using her car and Harley has insisted multiple times that Rose Hill is so small that you could walk from one end to the other and back again in an hour and a half or less. Plus, Peter has his whole Spider-Man thing that makes walking (or running) long distances is a pretty easy thing to do, and Harley used to walk a lot before getting his driver’s license, so it’s just pleasant, walking hand in hand. The sun feels a little less overbearing and more like a constant, comforting blanket, and the looks they get from people they pass are easy to ignore, mostly because most of the people in Rose Hill have known about Harley being gay since he was outed in middle school, and the knowledge that Peter could easily keep away anyone who might try to approach them is enough to ease their minds. It’s not like Harley had friends here, anyway – the only people who’s opinions he cares about are the ones that already know, and that’s his Mama, his sister, and Robby Johnson. No one else in this town matters to him.

When the graveyard comes into view a mere fifteen minutes later, Harley stops dead in his tracks, face kind of blank and void of emotion. Peter squeezes his hand, and he softly admits, “I don’t… I don’t know where he is. Mama said somethin’ about being on the north side, but…”

“We’ll find him,” Peter tells him, taking one step forward and waiting until Harley does the same before taking another step. There’s no conversation after that, just a strange sort of silence, not heavy, but not light, either – it’s just quiet for the sake of being quiet as they slowly navigate the tombstones, scanning over names row by row until Peter comes to a stop and points to their right. “There. I see him.”

**William H. Keener-Marsh**

**Father, brother, son.**

**1971-2018**

Harley stares at those words for a very long time, not moving, not reacting, barely even remembering to breathe. Peter lets him stew in silence for about ten minutes before asking, “How are you feeling now?”

Another minute passes, and Harley isn’t really sure how he’s feeling, to be completely honest, but he finds himself thinking back to all the kind words from the funeral, the people who approached him and said they were sorry for his loss, and without meaning to, he murmurs out loud, “I’m not.”

“What?” Peter looks taken aback by that response.

“I’m not sorry for my loss,” Harley says, a little louder, his brows pinching together. “I’m not… I’m not sad. I’m not going to cry over him. I’m not going to miss him or want him to come back, because… because I did that already, you know? Every year, I hoped he would come back, let myself get my hopes up every Christmas, every birthday, thinking he’d finally call, send a letter, something. And I… I suffered my loss when I was seven years old. I’m not sorry for my loss, because I lost him a long time ago, but people kept saying sorry to me like I should still be grieving something I already lost. But it’s… it’s not… it’s not an open wound. It’s not new, it’s not fresh, it didn’t start hurting again because he died, and I’m not sorry that I’m not gonna miss him. And that makes me sound like a bad person, but I know I’m not.”

Peter lets Harley’s words sink in for a moment, then clears his throat, unsure. “Some people talk to the people they’re visiting,” he tells Harley softly. “I talk to Ben sometimes, and my parents, whenever I get around to visiting their graves. I know this is different, but… is there anything you want to say to him?”

There’s not much hesitation before Harley is shaking his head. “No. If he wanted to hear what I had to say to him, he would have had the decency to call. He doesn’t get to hear what I say now.”

It’s not surprising, really. Peter nods slowly, blinks once, then says, “Well, I want to tell him something.”

“You…” Harley trails off, looking at Peter in mild shock, confusion clear in his eyes. The questions are obvious, the _what_ , the _why_ , but Harley doesn’t ask, just lets out a huff of a laugh and gestures with his free hand towards the grave. “Go for it. He was a great listener before the whole abandonment thing.”

Part of Peter thinks that those jokes are going to become harmful if Harley keeps telling them, but he also knows that he’s made much worse jokes in relation to his own losses, so he bites his tongue to stop from commenting on it, not wanting to be a hypocrite, and instead takes the smallest step forward, keeping a tight hold on Harley’s hand but trying to approach the tombstone in a way that feels respectful enough. He knows what he wants to say, but he’s not sure how he wants to say it, so he worries his lower lip between his teeth and he thinks for a solid minute before he hesitantly begins with, “Hi, Mister Keener, sir. I’m, uh- I’m Peter. Peter Parker. I’m dating your son, Harley, have been for, uh- for a few weeks now, but I’ve been his friend for a few months, too, and he’s really great, sir. I like him a lot. Like, _a lot,_ a lot. Like, the kind of a lot that you think is gonna last forever, you know? The kind of like that you think is gonna turn into love one day. That kind of thing.” He feels Harley tighten his hold on Peter’s hand, a sharp intake of breath that Peter doesn’t react to – he just squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and goes on to say, “You really missed out, Mister Keener, sir. I don’t- I don’t know what your reasoning was to do what you did, I don’t know if you thought it’d be better, but there’s nothing better than him, sir. And maybe that’s just, like, a hormone thing, or whatever, because we’re still just dumb and sixteen and statistics aren’t really in our favor, and that’s fine, as long as we’re happy while we’re together, then it’s okay if the statistics are right and we don’t last forever, that’s just life, you know? But we, uh- we’ve both been through a lot, Mister Keener, and I think we’ve both had to grow up pretty fast, and we’re barely under seventeen, but sometimes we act more mature than the adults around us. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything in the long run, but I think it’s fair to think it’s special. I think it’s fair to say that statistics can’t speak for us. And it’s fair to say you can’t speak for yourself, either, but I’m kinda saying this more for Harley to hear it, not for you. No offense, sir.”

There’s a strange sort of noise that Harley makes, something that could be a laugh but is too strained and muffled by a wobbling lower lip. Harley’s voice wavers, uneven, as he speaks. “Peter, what are you…?”

“I just gotta—” Peter stops, breathes in, lets it out. “I gotta be honest, Mister Keener, sir. I’m not, uh- I’m not so sure I believe in any sort of afterlife, but I guess a lot of people didn’t believe in Gods, either, until Thor showed up, so maybe I should believe in an afterlife, but I don’t think I do, and I don’t think you can hear me, but just in case you can, I wanna be sure you know that you really fucked up, sir. If you’d decided to be with your other family and still kept in contact with the one you left, that’d be something else, but you didn’t do that, sir. You left the best person I’ve ever met, and you hurt him, and I think a big part of it is because how much I care about him, and I- I never met you, sir, but I hate you for doing that. I really, really do, but I also don’t, ‘cause he wouldn’t exist without you. So, in summary, I guess, um- I guess, what I really wanted to say was, uh- thank you, Mister Keener, sir, for having Harley, for being a big part of why he’s alive, but what I also wanted to say was fuck you for ever thinking there was anything better than staying with him, fuck you for making him cry, and fuck you for hurting him. Or, all of that, but in a more respectful way, ‘cause I was raised to be respectful, even to people like you, sir.”

“Jesus,” Harley barks out a surprised laugh, but his eyes are glimmering with tears as he tugs on Peter’s hand to spin him around and bring them chest to chest, lower lip still wobbling even as he grins. “You sure are something, aren’t you, Peter Parker? Never thought I’d hear you curse out a dead guy in a god damn _cemetery_ , I gotta admit, but that’s- that was- god, Pete, I just—”

Peter is too busy holding his breath anxiously, afraid that maybe he said too much, maybe said the wrong thing, that he doesn’t notice that Harley’s leaning in to kiss him until their lips brush, but he quickly leans into it to reciprocate, head tilting and free hand settling somewhere on Harley’s ribs while Harley uses his free hand to gently cup the side of Peter’s face, and it’s a bit reminiscent of their first kiss, really, because a few tears slip from the corners of Harley’s eyes and make their lips taste a bit salty, but neither of them care, lingering there for a long few moments. Peter only pulls away when he remembers where they are. but he doesn’t actually care about that all too much, still leans their foreheads together and brings up a hand to wipe away Harley’s tears. “Do you want to go home now?”

Taking in a deep breath, Harley clenches his jaw a bit, then unclenches it when he admits, “Yeah, but… but I wanna go _home_ , like, back to New York home. Which is so weird, ‘cause I always thought I’d call Ma’s house home, but now it’s… it doesn’t feel like that anymore. It’s just Ma’s house, and I have a room there, but it isn’t actually home. I wanna go home, actual home, New York home, you know?”

“If you wanna leave Rose Hill early, we can just tell Tony,” Peter offers. “He’ll send a Quinjet to get us as soon as we ask. We’d probably be back in New York by sunset.”

Harley sniffles a bit, considers this, but then shakes his head with a sigh. “I still wanna see my Ma, and Abbie. I don’t know if they’ll want to come visit anytime this summer, and I doubt I’ll be coming back here for a while after we leave, so… I can wait ‘til Tuesday. And before you say it, yes, I promise I will tell you if I change my mind, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to.”

This draws out a little twinkle of laughter from the center of Peter’s chest, and he leans in to kiss Harley again, a quick kiss, before stepping away and linking their hands to pull Harley with him. “Are we gonna be one of those couples that always finishes each other’s sentences and stuff?”

“Honestly?” Harley shrugs, glances over his shoulder at his father’s grave briefly before facing Peter with a smile and walking with him out of the cemetery. “I think so, and I’m one hundred percent okay with it.”

“Can’t wait to annoy everyone else in our lives with that,” Peter snickers, though he scans over Harley’s features quickly, likely checking for any sign of distress, but he comes up empty handed and feels a grin stretch over his face at that fact. “Can you imagine how pissed off Tony’s gonna get? I bet it’ll take less than two days for him to kick us out of the lab and threaten to never let us back in.”

Harley hums, leads the way towards the gate of the cemetery with a surprising little pep in his step. “I say it’ll only take one day, _and_ he’ll accuse us of making a secret language specifically to mess with him.”

“Oh, you’re _so_ on. Five bucks?”

“Ten bucks and a coffee date.”

“You’re lucky I like you, Keener.”

 

 

 

 

Harley wakes up to the sound of labored breathing.

It takes him a long moment to realize that’s what it is, brain foggy and muddled with sleep, eyelids feeling far too heavy to lift, but there’s a sharp inhale and a rough sob that draws him into full awareness, and he quickly pushes himself into a sitting position, forcing himself to rapidly blink his vision clear as he squints through the darkness of his room. That takes another moment, but soon enough he’s able to make out the shaking shoulders and the scrunches up, tear stained features of Peter, who appears to still be fast asleep even as he continues to whimper and sniffle and weep. Harley’s heart shatters a bit in his chest at the sight, and he carefully sets a hand on Peter’s arm, lays himself next to him and makes sure they’re face to face before he gently shakes at his shoulder and murmurs, “Hey, Pete, it’s just a dream. Wake up.”

The sound that Peter lets out then is devastating and quiet, kind of like all the air has been forced from his lungs, and when he tries to breathe back in, it’s with a wheeze that doesn’t seem to allow enough air into his lungs. Harley tries not to panic as he props himself on his elbow and continues to shake Peter awake.

“Peter, baby, you gotta—” Harley stops as Peter starts to cry a bit harder, and he definitely isn’t getting enough oxygen with his short inhales and shaky exhales. Harley curses under his breath, gets a bit more frantic as he goes from shaking Peter’s shoulder to lightly tapping his cheek, raising his voice slightly as he says, “Wake up, Pete, you’re dreamin’. You gotta wake up and breathe, okay? Wake up, Peter.”

It doesn’t look like it’s gonna be enough to stir him, but Peter sucks in a stronger breath after a few seconds of this, knits his brows together and gives a slight shake of his head, jaw wobbling and lower lip getting trapped between his teeth. He still isn’t fully conscious, but he’s getting closer, so Harley just keeps saying his name and takes a break from tapping his cheek to lightly pull his lower lip free, stomach clenching when he sees that Peter had been biting it so hard that it started to bleed, and by the time Peter finally opens his eyes, he isn’t the only one crying, though he doesn’t seem to notice that quite yet, doesn’t notice much of anything, barely manages to focus his gaze on the boy beside him and croak out a heartbreaking little, “Harley?” before instantly bursting into tears and throwing himself forward.

“Woah,” Harley says in a whoosh of air, having to brace one hand on the mattress to stop from lurching back and hitting the wall due to the force of the collision, but he quickly rights their position, manages to sit up and lean against the wall instead, Peter kind of half on his lap and half not, his face pressed to Harley’s shoulder and his entire body trembling as he clutches onto Harley and sobs. “Hey,” Harley breathes, gentle and quiet as he hugs Peter as tight as he possibly can, rubbing gentle circles against his back and rocking slightly from side to side. “It’s okay, it was just a dream, honey. You’re alright.”

“It felt so real,” Peter chokes out with another painful sounding sob, but he takes a deep breath after that, lets it out as slowly as he can, and holds onto Harley tighter, still crying but trying to at least maintain his breathing enough to stop the aching in his lungs. Harley is just grateful that he’s awake now, and keeps up the comforting movement until Peter lurches back, bloodshot eyes wide and guilty. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry!” he hisses, sounding absolutely mortified. “Shit, we’re- this- I’m supposed to be here for you, this whole thing is about you, I can’t- fuck, Harley, it was just a nightmare, I’ll be fine, you don’t need to—”

“Peter,” Harley says. “It can be about both of us. C’mon, it’s okay. Let me be here for you, too.”

For a moment, Peter falters, looking as though he’s having an inner battle with his own fear and guilt, but then he lets out a breath, juts his chin down in a curt nod, and then falls forward again, curled up in Harley’s lap and allowing the warmth to ease the tension from his body. “I’m sorry,” he says again, voice muffled by the fabric of Harley’s shirt. “I don’t usually have nightmare’s that make me react in real life. I usually just, like, wake up really disoriented for a minute, and then I’m fine, but sometimes they’re worse and if I had known I’d have one of those and wake you up then I would’ve gone to sleep on the couch.”

Harley finds his nose scrunching at the mere thought of that, resting his head on top of Peter’s and using a hand to brush through the curls on the nape of Peter’s neck. “Honey, there’s no way I’d be survivin’ this trip if you were sleepin’ on the couch. I’m pretty sure the only reason I haven’t lost my sanity is because we’ve been able to close that door and just exist, without everything else, you know?” Peter offers a simple nod in response, lets out a soft sigh as he tries to tuck his knees against his chest and leans his forehead on Harley’s shoulder. Harley lets a comfortable silence settle over them for a few minutes, listens as Peter’s breathing becomes even more even and strong, the sniffles becoming few and far between, before he softly asks, “How often do you get them? The nightmares, I mean.”

The answer isn’t all that simple, because Peter isn’t really sure. “I don’t remember the last time I had a good dream,” he says slowly, frowning to himself. “But sometimes I don’t dream at all, so I dunno. Most nights, I guess. Probably, on average, about four or five times a week, if I were to guess. so…”

“What was this one about?” Harley’s tone is pitched so low, so hesitant but so kind and inviting.

“New York,” Peter whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. “How many people are getting hurt and dying ‘cause I’m not there. Which is such bullshit because I want to be here with you, want to be here for you, but I feel guiltier and guiltier with every minute that goes by and I’m not there. The crime rates have been higher the past few days, and Tony says I’m allowed to take a break but when I take a break people die, and when people die their families lose someone they love, and I can’t even _think_ about losing another—”

“Hey, no, keep breathing, baby,” Harley cuts in, catching the way that Peter’s rambling is starting to make his chest rise and fall heavily, unevenly. Peter makes a slightly distressed noise, but he takes a deep breath, holds it for a few moments, and lets it out shakily, then repeats that process a few more times.

Once his breathing is steady again, he manages to let out some kind of chuckle. “That’s a new one.”

Harley blinks once, confused. “A new what?”

“Name,” Peter tells him. “Baby. You’ve only used honey and sweetheart up ‘til now. Mostly honey.”

“Oh, uh…” Harley trails off, shrugs the shoulder that Peter isn’t still leaning his head on, and sheepishly says, “Well, it- it’s probably, like, the most popular one people use, right? And I didn’t even really mean to say it, I’m just, like, still kind of half asleep and it kind of just slipped out, you know?”

Peter pulls back a little bit, still sitting in Harley’s lap with his arms kind of hooked around Harley’s shoulders, a small smile playing on his lips that looks fucking cute as hell despite the redness in his eyes and the tear tracks on his cheeks. “I like it,” he says with his own shrug, glancing away from Harley and looking around the dark room until his eyes land on the flashing numbers of the alarm clock. Suddenly, he brightens, and he faces Harley again with a grin. “It’s after midnight.”

Harley checks the clock, sees that it’s a few minutes until one, and nods. “Yeah, looks like it. Why?”

“Well,” Peter starts slowly, shifting his legs until he’s sort of straddling Harley instead of just sitting on him, and his grin grows wider when Harley settles his hands on Peter’s hips. “Yesterday was Friday, right? And today is now Saturday, June twenty third, and unless Robby got the date wrong, which I probably should have asked beforehand, that means it’s officially your birthday, right?”

A moment of silence, followed by a very unconvincing, “…No.”

Features softening a bit, Peter lifts a hand from Harley’s shoulder and uses it to brush his fingers lightly through his hair, mostly just to push it out of his face. “If you don’t wanna celebrate your birthday, then I’ll just tell you happy birthday and leave it at that. Promise.”

Harley sighs, leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes for a moment before fluttering them open again and quietly murmuring, “No, it’s- I’m okay with celebrating my birthday, as long as it’s, like, smaller stuff, like you said. Cake, a present or two, and a small dinner? That stuff’s fine. I just… I don’t like people making a big deal out of it.”

“Can I…” Peter trails off, brows furrowed in thought. “I mean, is it okay if I ask why?”

“’Cause if my birthday was really a big deal, then my dad would’ve come back for it.”

The look that crosses Peter’s face is a mixture of something pained and something furious, which is an odd combination that Harley didn’t think he’d ever see on Peter Parker. For a moment, he’s almost afraid that Peter is upset with him, but then he just grinds his teeth and grits out, “Y’know, we might have to visit your dad’s grave again before we leave. I just thought of some more things I wanna say to him.”

A slightly surprised and fairly quiet bark of laughter escapes from Harley then, and he knows his eyes must be shimmering with some kind of amusement and fondness because Peter ends up looking away with a slight blush on his face. Harley just shakes his head, still giggling, and says, “It’s my birthday.”

“It’s your birthday,” Peter repeats with a nod, grinning excitedly. “How do you want to start it?”

“Oh, that’s simple.” Harley tugs Peter impossibly closer, until their noses are brushing together and lips are only millimeters apart. Peter leans his forehead against Harley’s with a content little sigh. “Kiss me, Parker.”

Peter doesn’t need to be told twice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SO GONNA BE LATE FOR WORK BUT HEY HERES A CHAPTER SKDFJKSFJ

Birthdays are fickle little things, because most of the time, they don’t feel very little at all.

Thinking back on it, Harley remembers the first seven years having some kind of consistency to it, not necessarily traditions, but sort of unspoken agreements. The birthday kid would be woken up with breakfast in bed, most likely chocolate chip pancakes whipped up by one William Keener and served with a mountain of whipped cream and syrup and various other topping options that Harley’s surprised he never got sick after inhaling a plate full of pure sugar at an alarming rate. Angela Keener would bring exactly one present to them and tell them they’d get the rest after dinner, and they’d open up that gift in a flurry of excitement and energy, still sitting in bed and practically vibrating in excitement.

Harley quite liked his birthday.

Then his dad left.

For his eighth birthday, Harley waited by the front door, convinced that his dad would finally come home, would say sorry, make him breakfast and ruffle his hair and tell him he loves him. He stayed by the door until the sun set, and then he spent that night laying in his mom’s room and crying until he fell asleep. For his ninth birthday, he didn’t hover, but he still hoped, checked the mail for a card that never came, eyed the phone for a call that never went through. For his tenth, he didn’t hope, but he wished.

By his eleventh birthday, he gave up entirely, and his birthday started to feel more like a hassle than anything else, a yearly reminder that his father wasn’t there, that William had left and was never coming back. He still smiled at his mother and his sister, said thank you for any gift he received, blew out the candles without making a wish and ate his piece of cake with a content hum, but it was all like a chore.

His seventeenth birthday is different.

He starts it by making out with his boyfriend at one in the morning, Peter perched in his lap and kissing Harley like he’s the oxygen he needs to breathe, Harley clutching at his hips and his waist while Peter plays with his hair. They kiss for what feels like hours, only breaking for air when necessary, and then they lay side by side and they keep on kissing, until it’s nearing three and they’re both too tired to do more than press their lips together one more time before cuddling together and falling asleep, and when Harley wakes up again, his alarm clock telling him that it’s almost ten, he feels well rested and warm.

Peter is in the kitchen, putting together two large plates of waffles, eggs, and bacon, and when Harley sees him, he can’t help but to smile and make his way over to him, sort of hugging him from behind and propping his chin on his shoulder. Peter sighs when Harley does it, sounding exasperated, but his words are clearly amused as he says, “Y’know, breakfast in bed is kind of pointless without the _in bed_ part.”

Harley just shrugs, closes his eyes and hugs Peter tighter. “I prefer this.”

“Breakfast in the kitchen it is,” Peter chuckles, turning around in Harley’s arms to bring them nose to nose, a wonderful little smile playing on his lips that Harley can’t help but admire when he forces his eyes open again. Peter eyes the clear grogginess on Harley’s features and teasingly asks, “You think you have the energy to eat right now, or do I have to feed you?”

“Mm…” Harley trails off, tilting his head from side to side as he ponders his answer. Then, nodding once, he decides on, “I think you have to feed me.”

Instantly, Peter spins them around, presses Harley up against the counter before gripping his hips and lifting him off the ground, setting him on top of the counter instead. “There,” he grins, looking cheekily smug as Harley blinks owlishly at him in shock, before he reaches around Harley grab one of the two plates he had put together. He rips off a piece of one of the waffles, pops it in his mouth, tears off another piece, and then holds it up to Harley’s lips. “Eat up, birthday boy.”

“I was kidding,” Harley says. “You don’t actually have to feed me.”

Peter’s grin widens. “You gonna eat it or not?”

Harley falters, then shrugs again, parting his lips obediently and accepting the bite of the waffle that’s fed to him. Peter waits expectantly as Harley chews and swallows, then quirks a brow at him questioningly. “Did you make these?” he asks. Peter nods slightly, and Harley smiles. “You’re a god damn blessing.”

“Does that mean they don’t taste like shit?” Peter questions somewhat nervously, looking down at the plate with uncertainty. “I mean, I tried it all, and it seemed fine, but Aunt May is kind of shit at cooking and I always feel like she somehow passed that onto me, even though we’re not even blood related or anything, so, like, if it isn’t very good, then, like, I can try to find something else, or—”

“It’s great,” Harley interrupts, reaching forward to take another piece of the waffle and nudging Peter’s side with his knee reassuringly. “But you didn’t have to do this, you know that, right?”

Peter shrugs, though he looks pleased that Harley really seems to like the food. “I wanted to. Small things, right? Making you breakfast is a small thing. We’re just doing small things today.”

That specific wording makes Harley curious, squinting at Peter slightly. “What kind of things?”

“None that requires leaving the house for anything other than getting stuff to make a cake,” Peter tells him instantly, grabbing a fork and holding a bite of eggs up to Harley’s lips. “And nothing that we can’t just skip doing if you don’t want to. None of that ‘til later, though. For now, it’s just birthday breakfast.”

There’s still a bit of curiosity bubbling up in Harley’s gut, but he trusts Peter, and he knows that Peter knows that he doesn’t like big things happening on his birthday. Plus, he knows Peter isn’t kidding when he says that Harley can choose to skip any ideas Peter has, so there’s no way they’ll end up doing something he wouldn’t want to do. Shoving his curiosity away, Harley gives himself over to the hint of excitement coursing through his veins as he accepts the forkful of eggs and grins at the sight of his sleepy, disheveled boyfriend standing in front of him, hair a mess, pajamas askew, feeding Harley his breakfast bite by bite with pure concentration on his face, like he needs every one of his braincells to not mess it up.

Harley’s seventeenth birthday is already his favorite, and it’s barely even begun.

 

 

 

 

“Where did you even get a record player from?” Harley asks, bewildered, as Peter kneels on the floor, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, all of his focus tuned in on carefully putting the vinyl into place. “I know for a fact we’ve never owned one, so you had to have pulled that from somewhere.”

Peter hums, leaning back with a nod once the vinyl is properly set. “I might have texted Tony.”

That answer isn’t really much of an answer at all. “What, and asked him to send a fucking _record player?”_

“Among other things.”

Christ, Harley isn’t a fan of these vague answers. He still doesn’t understand why he hasn’t seen his mom or his sister all morning, or why Peter is so insistent on setting up this apparently shipped overnight record player and playing this vinyl that he won’t let Harley see the cover of. In fact, if anyone other than Peter were doing this, Harley would’ve just walked out the door by now, but it is Peter, and Harley kind of can’t imagine ever doing something like that to Peter, so he just tips his head back and groans at the ceiling in exasperation in order to make his frustration clear.

Unfortunately, Peter only snickers, obviously amused. “Have a little patience, birthday boy.”

“I’ve never had an ounce of patience a single day in my life,” Harley tells him, voice bland and deadpan.

The record player makes a crackly sort of noise as it comes to life, and Peter is too busy grinning to properly respond as he gets to his feet and tugs Harley closer by his hand. “So, this is probably the cheesiest thing I’m doing today,” he says, appearing a little sheepish, and Harley suddenly feels a little bit like shit for complaining now that he sees the genuine glint of something in Peter’s eyes. “I, uh— I don’t really have that many memories of my parents, y’know? And that kind of sucks, especially since we don’t even really seem to have that many pictures of them, either, but, um, one thing I do remember is kind of- kind of weird? I don’t know, I must’ve only been, like, two or three when this happened, but I have this, like, super vivid memory of sitting in my high chair and eating dinner and watching my parents slow dance to Frank Sinatra, and now whenever I hear anything by Frank Sinatra, I think of them, but recently, I’ve kind of been thinking of you, too. Just ‘cause, uh— I kind of grew up wondering if I’d ever find someone I’d wanna dance with like that, and I— I know what I said yesterday, and I know I meant it, that how I feel about you is the kind of like that I just know is gonna turn into love when we’re ready for that, and, I mean, maybe it’s dumb, ‘cause you’re literally just turning seventeen and I’m sixteen for another, like, month and a half, but I just thought it might be a nice idea, or—”

Harley definitely feels like an asshole for complaining now, his heart sort of doing this fluttery kind of thing in his chest as he leans in to silence Peter’s rambling with a sudden kiss, cupping Peter’s face in his hand. Peter lets out a long breath through his nose as he tilts his head to the side and returns the kiss languidly, and Harley is done for, head over heels, gone – he wants to kiss Peter and never have to stop, wants to spend the rest of his life in this bubble of safety that he feels whenever him and Peter are alone, wishes he could pluck this moment out of the timeline and keep it for eternity.

Unfortunately, that’s not something that he can really do, so it’s only a matter of time before Peter is breaking the kiss to blink at him with wide eyes and a soft smile. “Not too cheesy?”

“Maybe a little,” Harley admits, because it is super cliché, he can’t deny that, “but I like cheesy. And I like you. Mix the two together and it’s pretty much perfect in my opinion.”

“Is it too cheesy to ask you to dance with me?” Peter questions, and Harley notices, now more aware of his surroundings without the distraction of Peter’s lips against his, that the scratching of the record player has already given way to music, floating around the air gently. Harley can’t recognize the song, but he recognizes Frank Sinatra’s voice, and he doesn’t bother to reply, just tugs on Peter’s hand and hums along, swaying from side to side. It’s not much of a dance, their arms aren’t even placed properly, but neither of them point that out or try to fix it. It’s good. It’s nice.

Would they place at a dance competition? No, they wouldn’t.

Do they give even the slightest shit about that?

Absolutely not.

 

 

 

 

“Hey, Miss Angie? Can I, uh, talk to you about something? Please?”

Angela looks up from her phone, finding Peter sort of hovering, looking anxiously around the room and pointedly avoiding her gaze. She cocks her head slightly to the side, confused, but moves over on the couch to make room for him. “Of course, Peter, but I thought you and Harley were going to the store…?”

“We are,” Peter nods, cautiously making his way forward and taking a seat at the very edge of the couch, looking almost like a wild animal seconds away from making a run for it. “Harley’s taking a quick shower and getting dressed, though, and I, um- I was just gonna wait for him in his room, or something, but I, uh- I’ve kind of been wanting to bring something up to you? But I don’t really know how, and I don’t want to, like, overstep, or anything, but it… it’s kind of important, and it might sound rude, but—"

“Peter,” Angie interrupts, almost amused by his rambling. “It’s alright. Just tell me.”

For a moment, Peter just wrings his hands together nervously, stares down at the toes of his shoes and gnaws on his lower lip, before he lets out a somewhat uneven breath, closes his eyes, and quietly says, “I… I’ve kind of been noticing that you don’t… you aren’t really there for Harley. Like. At all.”

A tense silence settles over them then, Angie’s face falling a little blank while Peter goes from wringing his hands to digging his nails into his palms. Then, tone a bit flat, Angie asks, “Excuse me?”

“I don’t—” Peter stops, shakes his head, and almost sounds a mix between determined and desperate as he continues with, “I’m not, like- I’m not trying to imply that you’re not a good mom or anything, because I can see how much you love him, and how much he loves you, but you have to understand, Miss Angie, that I- I’ve only been here for, what? Three days? And I’ve seen you turn your back on him so many times, and you keep- you keep criticizing his choices and- and—”

“I’m sorry,” Angie cuts in, now looking thoroughly offended, “but are you telling me how to be a mom right now? I don’t know how your parents raised you, but this isn’t something that—”

“They didn’t,” Peter interrupts, kind of flinching away and turning his head to look at the wall. “M-My parents didn’t raise me, Miss Angie. They, uh- they died, when I was four, in a plane crash. My Aunt May and my Uncle Ben raised me, and I- I know this isn’t a very nice thing to do, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but he- I’ve seen his face after you leave the room and sometimes he just looks _so upset,_ and I don’t know about you, but my Aunt May always tells me that if she’s doing something that’s hurting my feelings, she wants to know, so that she can learn and stop doing it, and I just- I mean, May isn’t my mom, but she’s the closest thing I’ve got to one, and I just thought that- that maybe you’d want to know, too, if you were hurting Harley’s feelings at all, and I really am sorry if I’m overstepping here, I really don’t want to be, but I don’t think Harley would ever try to tell you about this and I hate seeing how much it hurts him when you walk away without saying anything and don’t try to, like, ask him how he’s feeling, or even- even when, um, when Lucy said she was older than Harley? You just left the room, you didn’t even say anything, and I- I understand that you’re dealing with this loss, too, and that it’s hard for you, but- but when Uncle Ben died, Aunt May made sure I was never left alone unless I wanted to be alone, and after that happened, Harley was so- he was so _hurt,_ and I think he wanted you, but you never came and checked on him, and I _know_ that because I sat up with him for pretty much the entire night to make sure he was okay, and I just- I don’t think you’re doing this on purpose, because if you knew it was hurting him, I think you’d stop, but it’s- it does hurt him, ma’am, and I don’t want him to keep hurting.”

Another silence settles over them, but this one isn’t as tense, more contemplative, as Angie takes a long moment to ponder over his words, no longer offended, but rather thoughtful, and a little pained. Then, in a kind of strained voice, she lets out a sigh and says, “You’re a really good kid, Peter. Thank you.”

Peter looks over at her, mildly shocked. “For, um- for what?”

“For being good for him,” she tells him simply. “And for being willing to tell me this, even though you probably knew I’d get mad at first. I… I worry about him, being all the way in New York. It’s not that I don’t trust Tony and Pepper, because I do, but he’s my son, and I feel like he doesn’t need me anymore.”

“He _does_ need you,” Peter says, with a slight frown. “I mean, he looks forward to his daily calls with you so much, it’s kind of insane. Tony and Pepper being parents for him doesn’t change the fact that you’re his mom. You just… I mean, I don’t want to tell you what to do, obviously, but I feel like you just need to remind him that you love him, you know? Because I think he’s starting to doubt it a little bit.”

Angie smiles, a bit forced and clearly upset about what she’s been told, but she’s not upset with Peter, rather with herself for not noticing. “I’m really glad he found someone like you.”

Face burning a little bit red, Peter splutters for a moment, shakes his head and kind of shrinks into himself before murmuring, “I, um- I’m really glad that I have him, ‘cause I… I mean, he’s just- he’s amazing. You raised an amazing person, Miss Angie, and I’m really lucky to even _know_ him, let alone… y’know.”

This makes Angie’s smile widen a bit, less forced and more genuine. “Are you always this humble?”

Peter shrugs, face still red. “Um. Yeah, I guess. I just- I’m not all that great, so…”

“Yeah, no, that’s a lie,” Harley says, rounding the corner suddenly, his hair a bit damp from his shower and his smile wide and joyful. He looks a bit suspicious as he glances between Peter and Angie, but doesn’t really question it, just holds a hand out to Peter and asks, “You ready to go?”

“Uh—” Peter glances at Angie, reaches forward to takes Harley’s hand. “Yeah, I’m—”

“Actually, honey, could I talk to you for a sec before you go?” Angie cuts in, looking at Harley with a warm smile and almost visibly sorting through her thoughts. Harley falters, looks at Peter, then back at his mom when she assures him, “It won’t take long, I promise. Just a few minutes, probably less.”

Peter clears his throat, still takes hold of Harley’s hand in order to squeeze it lightly as he stands, and softly tells him, “I’ll wait outside, okay? Should probably call Tony anyway. I kind of hung up on him yesterday and then randomly texted him to send a record player and stuff at, like, two in the morning, so he probably wants to talk to me, and when you’re done, he’ll probably want to talk to you, too, so…”

Harley looks like he has about a dozen questions he wants to ask, but he just squeezes Peter’s hand back and nods a bit, murmuring, “Yeah, okay, sure. I’ll, um- I’ll be right out, then, I guess.”

 

 

 

 

Tony, for all intents and purposes, does not sound as upset as he should when he answers the phone. Instead, he sounds rather pleasant and casual, almost suspiciously so, when he says, “Hey, Pete. How’d the funeral go? Smoothly, I hope?”

“Uh, it- yeah,” Peter stammers, chewing a bit nervously on his thumb nail as he looks over his shoulder, at the front door of Harley’s house. “It went… as well as a funeral can, I guess. We sat in the way back, and I don’t think he really listened to anything anyone said, to be honest, but I think being there was good for him. For, um- for closure, is the best way to put it, I guess, and he seems to be in a really good mood today, which is good, and, um, we- we’re about to go to the store and get the stuff to make a cake, and—”

“Alright, take a breath, bud,” Tony cuts in, sounding vaguely amused. Peter stops, takes a breath, and then holds it as Tony asks, “So, are we going to talk about you pulling a real Stark move—and no, not in a good way, before you ask—or are we gonna pretend that it never happened and move on with it?”

Peter hesitates. “I mean, if I get to choose, I’d rather just pretend—”

“Yeah, no. Rhetorical question. Fess up.”

Which, honestly, is pretty much what Peter expected, but that doesn’t stop him from deflating a bit in slight disappointment, having hoped that he could get away with it. “Fine,” he murmurs, reluctant, scrubbing over his features with a strained sigh. “I, um- I mean, I don’t think there’s really anything to fess up to, Mister Stark. I just… I wish I could be in two places at once, I guess, but it’s fine.”

There’s a moment of quiet, where Peter just shifts his weight from foot to foot and tries not to let his mind wander down that path, until Tony lets out a slow breath and says, “We’ve talked about this, kid.”

“We have,” Peter agrees simply. “And I know, like, logically, that you’re right, but that doesn’t stop the nightmares, and the- and the _guilt,_ okay? I hate not being there, but I hate the idea of not being here, too.”

“You had another nightmare?” Tony asks, sounding saddened.

“Pretty much every night, Mister Stark,” Peter admits, kicking at the ground. “But they usually aren’t all that bad, just kind of weird and disorienting, but sometimes I have worse ones, and sometimes I have the really bad ones that send me into a sensory overload. I just… the longer I’m not being Spider-Man, the worse my nightmares are getting. I woke Harley up last night, and he had to calm me down ‘cause I was crying, and it’s- I mean… I don’t know. Being here for Harley is what I want to do. But I still feel bad.”

Tony falters for a moment, takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “I’m not going to make you talk about it,” he says, “but you know the rules, Spider Kid. Tell May or me, or tell Pepper, if you want to start having those calls set up again. And don’t forget that you’re only there for, what, three more days? The Quinjet will be there at noon on Tuesday to pick you two up. Spider-Man can wait until then.”

He’s right, and Peter knows it, but he doesn’t like putting Spider-Man on the back burner. Besides, Spider-Man just had a week off less than a month ago due to Peter getting shot when Mandy Morales died, and now he’s taking another week off? The public is sure to notice, and Daily Bugle is probably ripping him open right now, plastering harsh headlines and making false claims about the menace of Queens. Peter just sighs, tries not to think too much about that, and murmurs, “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Mister Stark. I don’t think I need the calls, though. Or, not yet, anyway.”

“But you’ll tell one of us if you do, right?” Tony asks.

Peter almost laughs. “Yeah, yeah, I will. Promise.”

Tony sounds satisfied by that when he says, “Good. Now, where’s the birthday boy? I wanna talk to the little shit before he gets too distracted to remember to call me.”

“He’s inside,” Peter tells him simply, chuckling. “Talking to his mom. Should be out any second, though. I can have him call you when he gets out here? Or you can just stay on the line and I’ll hand him the phone, whatever works.”

“I’ll stay on the line,” Tony says, and Peter can pretty much _see_ him shrugging. “I have some news, anyway. Remember how I told you I had those meetings about the accords and the rogues? Well, the meetings happened, and it looks like we’re finally making some progress.”

 

 

 

 

“I have not been the kind of mother you deserve,” Angie starts, simple, blunt and sudden.

Harley blinks once, a bit shocked. “Um… I—what?”

Angie isn’t looking at him, staring intently down at her own hands, clasped together in her lap. “I’ve been hurting,” she says softly, voice a bit strained. “Ever since the kids showed up on our front porch and told me who they were, I… I’ve shut down a bit, I know, and I didn’t really realize I was doing it. Ever since you got home, I’ve been turning away from you, not comforting you or being here for you the way that I’m supposed to be, and I’m not going to allow myself to do that anymore.”

“I…” Harley shakes his head, confused. “I don’t… What are you talking about, Ma?”

“I’m talking about doing better,” Angie tells him, her tone more firm, determined and unwavering. “Not just because of how I’ve been acting since you got home, but because I’ve been distant ever since you left. I’ve been holding back, feeling like you don’t need me anymore because you have Tony and Pepper, and I’ve been using that fear as an excuse to not act like a mom, but that’s what I am. I’m your mom, Harley, and I haven’t been the best one, but I’m going to do better. For you, and for Abbie. And I’m going to start right now by telling you how god damn proud I am of you, Harley Keener.” She’s looking at him now, meeting his gaze with watering eyes and reaching over to grab one of his hands, holding on tight and offering a somewhat wobbly smile. “I am the luckiest woman alive to have a son like you,” she goes on, sounding a bit hoarse, “and I’ve never told you just how proud I am. You’re smarter than anyone else in this town could ever hope to be, you made the choice to go to New York in order to have a stronger future, you found a wonderful boy who is so good to you, so good for you, and you treat him just as well as he treats you. You’re getting all A’s at school, you’re creating amazing thing with Tony, and I… I know I could never provide you with the resources you need to do this, but I won’t let my pride as a parent feel like I failed you when I know that all of us have only been doing the best we could with what we had. I’m proud of you, Harley, and I’m proud of our little family, me, you, and Abbie. I’m so proud.”

Harley looks borderline speechless, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, clearly at a loss for words. He shakes his head again, rubs at his eyes and tries not to look as close to tears as he is, choking out, “Where, um- where did this come from, Ma? I don’t…”

Angie just smiles wider, her features open, warm. “Peter cares a lot about you,” she says in place of a proper answer, but it seems to be enough, because Harley huffs out a laugh, not looking very surprised.

“I don’t really know why, but yeah, he does,” Harley agrees, and now he’s smiling, too, amused and fond and looking towards the front door with something hard to read written in his eyes. “Y’know, he told Dad off yesterday. Middle of the cemetery, and he was cursin’ out a gravestone, telling him all these things about how much of an idiot he was to leave me. Said that there’s nothin’ better than me, and that he may not have met him, but he hates him for what he did. It was… I dunno. It was a lot to process, but he’s…”

“He’s something special,” Angie finishes.

Harley grins now, nodding. “Yeah, exactly. A really good something special.”

There’s a slight moment where Angie just sees the way her sons eyes shimmer, how he keeps trying to look at her but finds his gaze sliding to the door every few seconds or so. His free hand is clenching and unclenching by his side, his smile looks soft and caring while also wide and genuine, and his features altogether seem to be brighter, in a way she’s never seen on him before, and she knows.

She knows, simply, that this is more than a teenage romance. Sure, the world is unkind, and they are still so young, with so much life ahead of them, so many struggles they have yet to face, some of which only being right around the corner—they start their senior year in September, after all, and college can be a hard topic to breach, if it turns out they decide not to go to the same place—but she sees the way Harley’s features shine at the mention of Peter, and she can feel it, the future, the potential. And it only solidifies in her head when Harley glances at her again, his face flushing with a slight blush, and he softly admits, “He said, um… yesterday, he said he likes me in a way that he knows is gonna turn into love, and I… I don’t know why, but that doesn’t scare me, ‘cause I think I feel the same way. Is that… is that okay, Ma? With how— I mean, we’re still just— I _just_ turned seventeen, and he doesn’t turn seventeen ‘til August, and…”

Angie shakes her head, squeezes his hand lightly, and tells him, “I won’t lie, you’re both so young and I don’t want you rushing into anything, but the fact that he’s saying it like that, that it’s will turn in to love, not that it already has, shows that he wants to take his time with it, to be sure. That’s a good thing, honey.” Harley nods slowly, seeming to accept this, and she can’t help but press a motherly kiss to the crown of his head before softly telling him, “Go ahead, hon. Don’t keep your something special waiting.”

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, making a cake can still be hard even when you’re two teenage geniuses, and that is a fact that makes Peter unreasonably angry, much to the amusement of Harley.

“I just—” Peter glares down at the mixing bowl, where he’s using just a little bit of Spidey strength to stir the cake batter together better. “It’s not that different from chemistry, right? You mix, you combine, you get an end result. Sometimes there’s exact measurements, sometimes it’s more of a generalization, and I _know_ chemistry. I’m really good at chemistry, actually, but this damn cake is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I solved a supposedly impossible equation for fun once, so I know I’m smart, but—”

“You solved an unsolvable equation?” Harley cuts in, brows raising high as he looks up from where he’s working on washing some of the dishes they’ve already dirtied. There’s flour on his face and a little bit of batter in his hair, but he makes it work, somehow. “What the fuck?”

Peter shrugs. “ _Supposedly_ unsolvable. It took me, like, a week, but yeah. Tony saw it and just walked away mumbling about how he has to make some calls because of a _damn teenager.”_

Harley just looks at him for a moment, blinking slowly, before letting out some kind of amused, fond scoff, his lips twitching up into a grin as he shuts off the faucet, deeming the dishes good enough to wait and do the rest later, before he comes up behind Peter, wrapping his arms around his waist and hooking his chin over his shoulder. “I’m not surprised,” he hums, flicking his gaze up to see the way Peter is biting back a smile, his face a little bit red. It makes Harley grin even wider, tighten his arms around Peter’s waist just slightly, before saying, “You’re literally the smartest person I’ve ever met, so it makes sense.”

“Equally smart, Keener,” Peter mumbles, but his smile is already breaking through, his body sort of leaning into Harley’s. “And this is, like, _super_ cliché, by the way.”

“What is?” Harley asks, turning his head slightly, leaning forward a bit to press a firm kiss to Peter’s cheek.

Peter snickers a bit, though he stops stirring the batter (it’s pretty much as good as it’s gonna get, anyway) and leans even further into Harley’s chest before answering, “This, what you’re doing. The whole hugging from behind in the kitchen thing? It’s in, like, every single romcom, I’m pretty sure. And this is literally the second time you’ve done it today, too, so that’s, like, double romcom points, or something.”

“Well, our romcom is the best romcom ever. Obviously.”

Looking dead serious, Peter nods, looking over his shoulder to meet Harley’s gaze as he says, “Oh, yeah, for sure. Because only the best romcom involves an enhanced teenage vigilante, a seventeen year old genius mechanic from Tennessee, a literal billionaire who doubles as a mentor figure, and a lot of traumatic events happening in a very short amount of time. One hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes.”

Harley rolls his eyes. “First of all,” he says, “there’s only been, like, _two_ traumatic events, and this whole dad hitting the hay thing? That barely counts. So, like, one and a half at most.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Peter snickers. Harley’s lips twitch, amused, but then he falters.

“Yeah, about sleeping at night,” he starts, kind of slow and unsure, because he’s only asked the bare minimum about this, about Peter and his nightmares and the fact that he doesn’t really seem to sleep all that well. Harley’s seen the aftermath of these nightmares twice now, first with the sensory overload, now last night, where he’d brought up the simple questions—the how long question, the what was it about question, but not much more than that. Peter drops his eyes back to the cake batter, his smile falling, and Harley almost bites his tongue and takes it back but he knows he has to ask. “I just… I don’t know, maybe I’m jumping here, but have you had a good night’s sleep since we got here, Pete?”

There’s a long moment where Peter doesn’t respond, but he’s still leaning against Harley, doesn’t appear to be distressed by that question, only thinking. Then, carefully, he says, “I don’t usually have a good night’s sleep anywhere, but no, I haven’t. Not because of being here, though. Just because... I dunno. Not being home, I guess. Only places I have a chance at actually sleeping well are the tower and the apartment. Anywhere else, I either just toss and turn all night, or I have increasingly bad nightmares.”

Harley nods slowly, taking that in—Peter isn’t sugarcoating it, but Harley can tell that he’s also not being as blunt as he could be. He decides not to push on that, though, instead asks, “Is there anything I can do to help you sleep better while we’re here? I know there’s only a few more days until we leave, but we can always go back sooner, too, if you need to. I mean—I know I said I wanted to visit with Ma and Abbie, but I’ve been talkin’ to Tony about having them come to New York later this summer, and I wouldn’t mind leavin’ early, honestly, and especially if you wanna go, too.”

“I—” Peter stops, looking back up at Harley, features a bit scrunched. “Do you _want_ to leave early?”

Shrugging, Harley says, “I wouldn’t be against it, if you wanna go.”

“But I don’t want to make you leave early if you don’t actually want to,” Peter counters, frowning. “Tony said the Quinjet will be here on noon Tuesday, and I’ve gone a lot longer without sleeping right, so—”

“Sweetheart,” Harley interrupts, his lips quirking slightly into a fondly amused half smile. Still not fully used to the pet names, Peter stops immediately, blinks at Harley owlishly, and Harley can’t stop the little giggle that bubbles up from the back of his throat as he says, “We’re talkin’ in circles, hon. How about this—we ask Tony to move it up a day. Leave on Monday instead of Tuesday. Is that okay?”

Peter hesitates, gnawing thoughtfully on his lower lip, before asking, “Are you sure you want to?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Harley nods, certain. “So, should I send Tony a text? Yes? No?”

It looks like Peter is about to protest further, but he must see the sincerity in Harley’s eyes—because he means it, he really does. Being back in Tennessee is just strange at this point, odd and a little uncomfortable, and if he’s going to be able to see his Ma and his sister later this summer, then he doesn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. Peter sighs, a small smile on his face, and spins them around to push Harley against the counter, smile widening into a grin at the slight yelp that Harley lets out. “Yes, thank you,” he says, shaking his head slightly, almost incredulously, as he leans in and presses a mere peck of a kiss to Harley’s lips. He pulls away only a moment later, but doesn’t go far.

Harley pouts. “It’s my birthday. Kiss me more.”

“Christ, you’re needy,” Peter laughs, but he leans in anyway, more than happy to comply.

 

 

 

 

By some miracle, the cake turns out alright. Sure, it doesn’t look all that pretty—the icing is kind of clumped and uneven, the cake itself kind of looks like it’s falling apart and crumbles pretty easily, and when Harley goes to blow out the candles, it honestly looks like the cake is going to get blown away, too, which results in some very ugly snorts coming from Peter as he watches—but it tastes good, and they made it together without the help of anyone else, and when Harley sends a picture of it to the group chat they have with Tony, Pepper, and May, all three of them compliment the final product.

(May asks how much of the batter ended up on the floor and on their clothes rather than into the cake pan, but neither Harley nor Peter grace that question with a response, which they suppose is answer enough.)

“Looks good, Little Keener,” Robby says when he stops by that evening, a poorly wrapped gift in hand and a wide, approving grin on his face. He looks at Peter, grin growing. “You set this up, I’m guessin’?”

“Gotta keep my promises somehow, sir,” Peter responds, also smiling as he brings a bite of cake up to his lips. Abbie quirks a brow at the interaction, while Angie just hides her own fond smile behind the rim of her glass. Harley just rolls his eyes, but he looks pleased when Robby reaches over to ruffle Peter’s hair.

Peter does not seem pleased, though, as he quickly ducks his head with an odd little squawk, already reaching up to try and tame the mess that is his hair. Robby just laughs, loud and boisterous, and sets the gift on the counter before telling Harley, “I can’t stay, unfortunately, but I couldn’t jus’ _not_ see Little Keener on his birthday. C’mere, kiddo.” He holds out his arms, and Harley is quick to clamber out of his seat to give the man a hug, a happy sort of sigh rumbling in his chest. Peter tries not to listen, he really does, but his hearing picks it up anyway when Robby whispers, “I know this has been’a hard week for you, what with losin’ your daddy all over again, but I’ve never seen you look this happy. I’m proud’a you, Little Keener, and I hope you stay this  happy as long as possible. Happy birthday, bud.”

When Harley sits back down, he does so with a little sniffle and a joyfully wobbly little grin, instantly leaning over to rest his head on Peter’s shoulder, apparently done with his cake. Peter intertwines their hands under the table, rests his head on top of Harley’s, and is only vaguely aware of the not-so-subtle way that Abbie pulls up her phone to take a picture.

 

abbie || @abbiekeener

happy birthday to this doofus i guess

_[ Image Attached – Harley is resting his head on Peter’s shoulder, two mostly empty plates sitting on the table in front of them. Harley has a dopey little grin on his face, his features soft, posture relaxed. Peter, with his cheek pressed to Harley’s hair, is sporting a soft smile and half-lidded eyes. Together, they both look at ease, like they could fall asleep where they are with no problem. The picture radiates love. ]_

**_Liked by michelle, Tony Stark, ned((:, May Parker, Pepper Potts, and 46 more_ **

 

 

 

 

 

Peter doesn’t have a nightmare that shakes him from his slumber that night. He doesn’t awaken with that familiar sense of dread and something sour in his stomach, bitter on the back of his tongue. No, instead he wakes up a little after midnight to gentle fingers carding through his hair, and when he blinks open his eyes to look, he kinds Harley, still appearing wide awake, looking at him with the softest smile. The smile falters when he sees Peter blinking at him groggily, and he pitches his voice in a whisper to ask, “Did I wake you up?” Silently, Peter shakes his head, helping Harley relax a bit. “Okay, good.”

“Why’re you still awake?” Peter asks, voice kind of a croak from just waking up.

“Too busy thinkin’ about how pretty you are,” Harley answers instantly, a bit cheekily, and the grin that grows on his face proves that he knows exactly how cheeky he’s being. Peter rolls his eyes a bit, then looks at Harley expectantly, until Harley lets out a little sigh and truthfully replies, “I dunno, honestly. I’m just thinkin’ about… about everything, I guess. About you, and Ma, and Abbie, and everyone in New York, and I’m thinkin’ about… about today, too. It’s just weird, ‘cause this was the first birthday I’ve had in a long time where I felt good, you know? I just felt good, like nothin’ could bring me down, and…”

When Harley trails off, he does so with a pinched expression, leading Peter to gently question, “And what?”

Harley lets out a long, slow breath, kind of shaky. “And as I was thinking about that, I realized, uh… you’ve said something, twice now, and I haven’t really had a true response to it, you know? And I need you to know that… that I like you, Peter. I really like you, and the way you described it—that you just know that this like is gonna turn into love someday, when we’re ready for it? That’s… I mean, that’s how I feel, too, and I haven’t told you that, and I just… I dunno. I guess I couldn’t sleep until I did.”

Embarrassingly, Peter can feel his eyes water a bit at that, and he tries to bite back a grin, but it breaks through anyway, and all he can think to do is murmur, “One day, I’m gonna love the fuck out of you,” before he reaches up, cups Harley’s face in his hand, and pulls him down for a kiss.

And Harley thinks, yeah, birthday are fickle little things, but his heart is thudding happily in his chest, and the boy he’s kissing means the world to him, and he’s good. He’s happy.

That’s what really matters.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this series is my baby and i'm already so excited to post the next installment holy fuck  
> anyway hope u enjoy the last chappy of this fic!!

**chair-man:** am i the only one that’s lowkey concerned here

 **mj:** what’s there to be concerned about

 **chair-man:** they

 **chair-man:** they said “we’re going to church”

 **chair-man:** and now they haven’t responded to the gc in two hours

 **chair-man:** and like??

 **chair-man:** peter isn’t religious???

 **chair-man:** idk if harley is but peter isn’t and harley hasn’t gone to church once since he moved to new york so like what the hell are they doing did god kill them bc their gay asses stepped into a church

 **howdy:** first of all

 **howdy:** rude

 **howdy:** second of all

 **howdy:** no

 **howdy:** third of all

 **howdy:** we totally did not get escorted out of the church by a group of angry white grandma’s because we were 100% not making out in the back row

 **mj:** i feel like i should be surprised but im not

 **spider in the suit:** i want it on record that i only agreed to make out in a church because i’m a good boyfriend and harley said please

 **spider in the suit:** he originally tried to do it at his dads funeral so consider this an improvement

 **chair-man:** wh

 **chair-man:** wha tthef cukf skdljkfj

 **chair-man:** did you actually get fucking kicked out of a church

 **chair-man:** please say syke

 **spider in the suit:** i cannot say syke

 **howdy:** it was pretty funny im not gonna lie

 **howdy:** they looked angry but in that old white person way that’s just hilarious

 **mj:** did you laugh

 **spider in the suit:** maybe a little

 **howdy:** yes i fucking did

 **mj:** good

 **chair-man:** i

 **chair-man:** okay

 **chair-man:** topic change

 **chair-man:** what time are yall getting back tomorrow

 **chair-man:** because it’s SUMMER and i’m BORED and you guys promised we’d get to hang out in the labs !! and i still haven’t met miles!! i need to meet my nephew!!

 **howdy:** what the fuck

 **howdy:** peter i swear to god

 **spider in the suit:** you’re the one who said we adopted him!!! he’s our son now, no take backs

 **howdy:** p e t e r

 **spider in the suit:** cmon harley mj was born to be the cool aunt

 **mj:** you’re right and you should say it

 **mj:** and i agree with ned i need to meet my nephew

 **howdy:** jesus christ you make ONE JOKE and SUDDENLY YOU’RE A DAD

 **spider in the suit:** i have to find a way to balance spider-man and fatherhood

 **chair-man:** that’s when the cool aunt and the nerdy uncle get to babysit

 **howdy:** or miles could just go back to his actual parents that are actually raising him and would probably be very upset to hear that two teenage dumbasses are claiming to be his fathers????

 **spider in the suit:** mmm i’ll convince them

 **chair-man:** neither of you answered my question

 **chair-man:** when! do! you! get! back!

 **howdy:** idk probably like 1:30 ish? we can text u from the plane to let u know

 **spider in the suit:** ned u do realize it will probably still be another day or two before you can actually come over right

 **chair-man:** ))))))))))))))))):

 **mj:** take it back

 **mj:** you hurt his feelings

 **spider in the suit:** but

 **howdy:** peter take it back he’s sad

 **spider in the suit:** i hate all of you

 **spider in the suit:** fine i’ll try to have happy pick you guys up and bring you to the tower around the same time we get there but just know i will be taking a long nap and then patrolling after i wake up

 **howdy:** he says that but he’ll be just as excited to see yall as you are to see him that he won’t actually nap

 **chair-man:** !!!!!!!!!!! :D HELL YES

 **spider in the suit:** ned ur endless enthusiasm makes my heart warm

 **chair-man:** <3

 **howdy:** stop being such good friends i don’t have a best friend and it makes me jealous

 **mj:** um?

 **mj:** fucking ouch, keener

 **howdy:** ???????????????????????????????????

 **mj:** dumbass im your best friend obviously

 **spider in the suit:** i feel like i rightfully deserve the title of harley’s best friend

 **mj:** you’re his boyfriend

 **spider in the suit:** yes? and?

 **howdy:** yall give me headaches

 **spider in the suit:** shut up i made us lunch but if ur not in the kitchen in thirty seconds to help me carry it all up to ur room then im eating it

 **howdy:** ur an angel and i adore u

 **howdy:** be right there

 **chair-man:** cute

 **mj:** disgusting

 **chair-man:** ,,,,disgustingly cute?

 **mj:** so cute that it’s disgusting

 **chair-man:** good to know we’re on the same page then

 

 

 

 

The thing is, Harley likes Tennessee.

No, he doesn’t _love_ it, not really, but Rose Hill is where he was born, where he grew up with a mother he loves and a sister he would die for. Rose Hill is where he spent seven years with a wonderful dad before the guy decided he didn’t want to be there anymore, and where he spent the following nine years doing his best despite the ache and pain that came with such blatant abandonment. This is where Robby lives, the man who’s borderline fatherly with him, and this is where he met Tony, the man who understood him and believed in him and didn’t hesitate to offer him a home in New York when Harley showed up unannounced with a duffel bag of clothes and no clue what he would do if Tony sent him away.

Tennessee isn’t home, Rose Hill isn’t home, but it’s where Harley Keener started, and he’s quite fond of the place, of all the little memories, the good and the bad. It’s not home, but it’s something good.

That being said, he can’t fucking wait to leave.

“Does that make me a bad son?” he questions out loud, sprawled out on his bedroom floor and watching the ceiling fan as it spins round and round. Peter’s head pops up from the edge of the bed and stares down at him in confusion, brows furrowed and features twisted, a frown tugging on his lips. Harley pauses, considers, and then elaborates with, “Wanting to go back to New York so bad, even though my Ma and Abbie are here. I shouldn’t be so excited to leave them, right?”

“I’m pretty sure the leaving them part isn’t what you’re excited about,” Peter says simply, tilting his head slightly to the side. “I mean, you said you’re okay with leaving early ‘cause they’ll probably end up visiting later this summer, right?” A bit hesitantly, Harley nods, leading to Peter giving him an encouraging little smile. “Then you’re just excited to go back to New York, not to leave them. You know you’ll see them soon. Nothing bad about that.”

Harley squints up at Peter for a moment, looking as though he doesn’t quite believe him, but then he just sighs and rolls onto his stomach, propping his upper body up with his elbows and stating, “I’m bored.”

Snickering, Peter flops himself back down on the mattress, though he shifts slightly so that his head is hanging upside down over the edge in order to keep looking at Harley. “Maybe you wouldn’t be bored if we hadn’t gotten kicked out of the church.”

Harley’s nose crinkles. “Have you ever actually sat through church? I’d be even _more_ bored. Which, like, not to be offensive to people who enjoy church or anything, but that shit is _not_ for me. So, really, I did us both a favor with all the kissy-kissy bullshit that got us kicked out.”

“A favor,” Peter repeats, snorting. “Harley, it was your idea to go there in the first place.”

“Then consider it making amends for my own dumb idea,” Harley shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Either way, the point is, I might be bored now, but if we had actually stayed there? I’d literally die.”

Peter laughs lightly, rolling his eyes in a fond manner before he settles his gaze back on Harley. “That seems a little dramatic,” he says simply, not actually judgmental or anything, just sort of points it out with a little smile on his face and skin that’s going a little red from hanging his head upside down.

“I’m being dramatic because I’m bored and there’s still another twenty four hours before we leave.”

With another chuckle of a laugh, Peter takes a moment to consider this, then offers, “We could keep watching Criminal Minds? We haven’t really made any progress since we got here, and we’re almost through season three, so that could be an easy way to pass time until dinner. Maybe make it feel like less than twenty four hours, or something, y’know?”

Harley blinks up at Peter, looking awestruck despite the simplicity of the idea, and, sounding dazed, as if he’s not really aware he’s speaking, he asks, “How far away is one day, do you think?”

For a moment, Peter considers being a smart ass about that question, but then he just hums, gives it a moment of thought, and then answers, “I don’t know how long until, like, _feeling_ it, but I think… I don’t think I wanna say it until we’re eighteen. Just to give us plenty of time to feel ready to say it.”

“That’s over a year for you,” Harley points out, brows rising slightly.

Peter doesn’t seem bothered by that as he nods. “Yeah, exactly. Like I said, plenty of time.”

“What if…” Harley trails off, frowning. “What if I wanna say it before then? Or if you decide you wanna say it before then? Like… I dunno, I guess I just don’t really understand why you insist on that much time. Shouldn’t it be something that we just… let happen when it happens, or something?”

“I mean, yeah, but—” Peter stops, biting his lower lip, and it should be humorous, how red his face is after being upside down for so long, but Harley’s a little bit consumed by this topic of conversation. Slowly, Peter lets out a sigh, and he sounds a bit guilty when he admits, “People I love tend to… y’know. Get hurt, and die, and, um… I know people say it isn’t really my fault, but it feels like it, you know? And I just—I feel like accepting that I love someone is inherently putting them in more danger, so I just… I want a lot of time to make sure before I say it, because saying it feels… dangerous. If that makes sense.”

For a moment, Harley just considers this, squinting up at the ceiling with slightly pursed lips and a thoughtful expression on his face, before he nods once and decidedly says, “Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, not the part where it’s your fault, because it isn’t, but I can see why feeling like it is would make you wanna wait for that kinda stuff. But, for the record, eighteen is a long ways away.”

Shrugging, Peter points out, “Less than a year for you, though. Have a little patience, Keener.”

With a huff, Harley pushes himself to his feet, giving Peter a faux glare as he nudges him in the side. “I don’t need patience,” he says. “I need you to move your ass so we can watch Criminal Minds.”

“Moving comes with a price,” Peter tells him seriously, then purses his lips with his eyes fluttered shut.

Harley considers giving him what he wants, but that would require leaning back down when he just got up, so instead of doing that, he grabs one of his pillows and swings it above his head before bringing it down to smack against Peter’s unprotected stomach—with a considerable amount of his strength, to be honest, but Peter is literally Spider-Man, and it’s just a pillow, so he only laughs at the surprised yelp that pushes past Peter’s now parted lips, and he doesn’t feel bad when Peter glares up at him with a pout.

“That’s not what I meant, Keener.”

“Yeah, well,” Harley shrugs, still grinning. “It’s what you’re getting. Scooch over, Parker. I wanna keep falling in love with Spencer Reid while also drooling over Derek Morgan.”

Peter’s still glaring at him, but he’s smiling, too, as he moves over to make room for Harley on the bed, simultaneously grabbing his laptop from where it’s sitting carelessly on the floor and opening the top to pull up Netflix. “You’re lucky I like you,” he says.

“Oh, I know,” Harley replies, settling against the pillows and letting his head fall to rest against Peter’s shoulder. “You don’t gotta remind me of the obvious, babe.”

And Peter has to sink his teeth into his lower lip to stop himself from grinning even wider, risking looking like a maniac, as he clicks on Criminal Minds and presses play on the episode they left off on, the second to last episode of the third season, but Peter thinks, _I’m lucky you like me, too,_ before leaning his head against Harley’s and letting himself melt into the comfort that being alone with him always brings.

 

 

 

 

“So,” Angie says, using her fork to push around the food on her plate as she looks over at Harley, who keeps glancing at the clock on the wall with an antsy energy. “What time do we need to leave tomorrow?”

Harley looks at his mom, looks at the clock again, and then looks back to answer, “Tony said the Quinjet should get here at noon, and since it’s, like, a twenty minute drive, I thought eleven thirty would be good? Just to get there a little early, you know?”

To Harley’s left, Peter sets down his fork, plate empty, and simply watches at Angie contemplates this, brows furrowed as she stares down at her uneaten dinner. “And you said…” she trails off, still thinking, then tries again with, “You said that Stark would be willing to have us visit, right?”

“Yeah!” Harley nods, features brightening. “He said that whenever works for you, he’ll fly you guys up and have you stay at the tower for a week. Might even get to visit the compound, which I haven’t even seen yet since Tony and Pep mostly just stay in the city, but I already have a whole list of places I wanna show you—well, I mean, I have a list of places that Peter and Ned and MJ took me that I think you two would like, and there’s some really good little restaurants, too, and—”

“Honey,” Angie cuts in, a small smile on her face, features fond. “I just wanted to make sure it was alright with him before actually taking the days off work. Whatever you end up planning, I’ll be excited to see.”

There’s a moment where Harley just smiles back, a little bit sheepish, before he perks up again and exclaims, “Oh, you could meet May! You have to meet May, she’s, like, one of the coolest people ever, and I think you two would really get along. Plus, like, she’s Peter’s aunt, so…”

Kind of like a parents meeting the parents thing, except it’ll be Harley’s single mother meeting Peter’s aunt. Not exactly the traditional meeting, but still. Peter smiles. “May loves having people over.”

“Do you think she’d like Robby?” Harley asks, genuinely curious as he turns to Peter. Instantly, Peter’s nose scrunches up on his features, leading Harley to roll his eyes and say, “No, not like that. I just mean, like, would they get along? Part of me thinks they would, but they’re also, like, _super_ different.”

“Didn’t May give you a talk when we started dating?” Peter questions, head tilting slightly to the side. “Probably not like the short one Robby gave me, but still. They’re not really as different as they seem.”

It’s pretty humorous, the way Harley’s eyes go wide as he shrinks back in his seat. “It was nothing like the talk Robby had with you,” he says, looking like he’s having some sort of war flashback. “I couldn’t look May in the eye for a week after that, Peter. A _week_. Your aunt can be terrifying.”

Peter seems proud about this as he says, “Yeah, I know. It’s ‘cause she’s badass. And a Parker.”

“Why do you live with your Aunt?” Abbie asks, the first time she’s spoken up since dinner was served—and the first time she’s spoken up in a while, as well. She’s been quiet for a few days now, always present and smiling and laughing along but not really participating in conversation.

Harley flinches. “Um, Abs, I dunno if—”

“No, it’s okay,” Peter cuts in, and he’s still smiling, all friendly and warm and open. Abbie tilts her head a little bit to the side, curious, and she just sits and listen as Peter assures Harley, “I mean, I’ve been in her family business by coming here with you, and I kinda told your mom a little bit, so it’s only fair. I don’t mind.” Harley looks like he wants to argue, but Peter’s features are purely genuine, so he just nods a bit and not so subtly reaches over under the table to hold Peter’s hand as Peter faces Abbie and tells her, “I live with my aunt because my parents died in a plane crash when I was four, and my Uncle Ben died when I was fourteen. My Aunt May is the only family I have left. It’s either her or foster care.”

Abbie blinks in surprise, but doesn’t have the chance to reply as Harley gives Peter an incredulous look. “Yeah, that’s complete bullshit. Tony wouldn’t let you go into the system like that.”

Peter just shrugs. “Maybe.”

“No, not _maybe,”_ Harley scoffs, quirking a disbelieving brow at Peter. “And May isn’t the only family you have. You have Tony, and Pepper, and Happy, and Ned and MJ, and, y’know, you got me, too.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peter says, and his smile has turned all soft and gooey and fond.

Clearing her throat, Abbie cuts into their moment, sounding a bit meek as she says, “I’m, um… I’m sorry, that you lost your parents like that. And your uncle. That… really sucks.”

Surprisingly, Peter just lets out a light laugh, and it seems to be genuine as he honestly tells her, “Yeah, it does suck, but that’s okay. You kinda just learn to live with it after a while. And it helps if you have some good people in your corner, too. Kinda the whole reason why I wanted to come here with Harley, to be in his corner, you know? It doesn’t fix anything, but it can make it easier, if that makes sense.”

For a moment, Harley just freezes, but then he grins at Peter with a wide concoction of emotions swimming in his eyes. Peter grins back, and yeah, Angie thinks—they’re each other’s something special, and she can’t do much to hide the fond smile that grows on her face at the simple little thought.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, when antsy with a restless energy, Harley can’t really manage to go to sleep. Usually, when this happens, he puts on a show or a movie, maybe just scrolls through his phone until his eye lids are too heavy to keep open, reads a book or puts on some music. There’s an endless amount of options to distract himself until his brain decides it’s ready to go to bed, and it’s never much of a problem.

Tonight, however, he giggles into his palm as Peter pulls on his shoes, and he whispers, “You have to be quiet. Ma isn’t a light sleeper, but she always used to catch me when I snuck out.”

“Should we even be doing this, then?” Peter asks, tightening the knot in his laces once before getting to his feet. There are bags under his eyes from not sleeping all that well, but his small smile is genuine, even when paired with the concern on his features. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

Harley just scoffs, holds out his hand to intertwine their fingers, and assures him, “Trust me, Ma’s probably surprised I’m waiting ‘til our last night to do this. It’ll be fine.” Then, taking on a more gentle tone, he adds, “Besides, I can’t sleep, and I know you can’t, either, so we might as well, right? It’ll be better than just tossin’ and turnin’ all night, y’know? And maybe we’ll get tired enough to sleep on the plane ride home or something. Plus… I wanna show you this before we go. Let me? Please?”

There’s a short lapse in silence where Peter just considers Harley’s words, but then he just smiles a little wider, the concern ebbing away into some kind of fond excitement. “Okay,” he says, squeezing Harley’s hand once, bopping his head in a nod. “Lead the way, then, cowboy.”

“Cowboy?” Harley repeats, laughing lightly.

Peter just grins and offers a little shrug. “I’ve never been a nickname kind of person, but ever since you started using pet names for me, I’ve been wanting to start using them, too. It’s a process.”

“And you decided to start with cowboy,” Harley snickers, shaking his head. “It’s a weird place to start, but you’re right, it is a process. Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’ll get there eventually.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Peter rolls his eyes, tugging lightly on Harley’s hand with faux annoyance.

“So impatient,” Harley teases, but he follows through the silent request and leads the way out of his room, both of them making sure to keep their footsteps light as they creep down the hallway and make their way down the stairs. Instead of going out the front door, Harley guides Peter through the kitchen and into the garage which has another door that leads outside over on the opposite wall. “C’mon,” he murmurs once they make it outside, the summer night air still warm enough to be comfortable despite the slight chill in the breeze brushing past them every few moments. Peter just lets himself be led into the backyard and down a path into the trees—not really a forest of any sort, but a wooded area that looks to be heavily explored, likely by a younger Harley and Abbie while they were growing up.

After a few minutes of heading down this path, getting further and further from the house, Peter finally speaks up again, sounding curious as he asks, “Where are we going?”

Sounding somewhere between giddy and smug, Harley tells him, “You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

Peter rolls his eyes again, but doesn’t say anything else, just glances around for another minute or two until they reach a grassy little clearing, which Harley quickly tugs him to the center of. Now a little bit confused, Peter goes to ask, “What are we—?”

“Look up,” Harley cuts in to say, grinning. Peter frowns a bit, scans over Harley’s features for a moment, and then does as asked, tilting his head back to glance up at the sky and—

_“Wow.”_

Harley’s already laughing again, the sound light and excited as he does the same, looking up at the stars glimmering up above. “Haven’t seen the stars since I moved to New York,” he tells Peter softly, practically in a whisper, as if he’s sharing some big, deep secret. Peter blinks once, the action slow as he instinctively drops his gaze again to look at Harley, watching as he says, “I thought, since you’ve always been there, maybe you’ve never really seen ‘em at all. Not like this, anyway. Incredible, right?”

“Yeah, it’s—” Peter glances up, blown away by the sheer brightness of the stars, taking in the way they seem to twinkle and shine. Harley has a point—Peter has seen the stars before, but never with as much clarity as this, never so crisp and clear and bright. It’s stunning, to say the least, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes on the sky, can’t stop himself from letting his gaze glide back down once more, because the stars are pretty great to look at, but he can see the reflection of the stars in Harley’s eyes, which are crinkled slightly with a smile as he stares up, features softened by the low light of the night but still so obviously relaxed and happy. Peter swallows the lump in his throat, and he prides himself in keeping his voice somewhat normal, if not only a bit more gentle than usual, as he says, “It’s— It’s amazing.”

“Don’t be such a cliché,” Harley murmurs, looking down with a little knowing smile playing at his lips. He raises a hand and points up, a single eyebrow cocked. “Don’t look at me. Look up. It’s better.”

With an almost sheepish sort of smile, Peter shakes his head once, responds with a, “Not better than you.”

And Harley’s small little smile falls at that, becomes something sort of awestruck and dumbfounded as he looks at Peter, clearly baffled by those words. “I brought you here to stargaze,” he says, rather lamely.

“I know, sorry,” Peter nods, sounding genuinely guilty. “I’m not trying to ruin it or anything, I just—”

“No, no, wait,” Harley interrupts, brows furrowed in thought. “That’s not—I just mean, I brought you here to stargaze, ‘cause I thought you might wanna see the stars, and you’re just lookin’ at me, and you just said, like, the most cliché, ooey-gooey shit I have ever heard, and I really wanna kiss the shit outta you, but I still wanna stargaze, too, so I’m kinda at a bit of a stand still on what I should do here.”

“Well…” Peter trails off, because he honestly wants to say fuck it and dive straight in to that _kiss the shit outta you_ option, but this is their last night, and Peter can kiss Harley all he wants in New York, too, so it’d be quite stupid for him to waste an opportunity like this. Making up his mind, Peter takes a look at the ground beneath them, takes into account that the grass seems to be dry and long enough to provide a bit of cushioning, and then he plops himself down on the ground, pulling Harley down to sit next to him. “I can’t say we won’t end up just making out anyway,” Peter tells Harley in response to his confusion, “but we can try to look at the stars a little bit before that happens. Besides, it’s not even one, yet. We have plenty of time before we need to head back to your house and make sure we’re all packed up.”

Harley grins at that, leans into Peter’s side a bit and then tips his head back to look up once more. Peter’s eyes still catch on Harley, but he manages to tear his gaze away to do the same, though it ends up being a constant battle to stop himself from looking back down. It gets even harder to resist when Harley lets out a little hum and asks, “Have you ever been stargazing before?”

Peter shakes his head. “No, not really. I mean—I’ve seen them, obviously, but I’ve never just… sat down and looked, you know? Doesn’t help that the only place I’ve been in New York where you can see the stars is at the compound, but, I mean, Mister Stark hasn’t really wanted to use it much, after the rogues and stuff. It’s still pretty cool, though. You should try and see if he’ll let you see it this summer.”

“That kinda makes me sad,” Harley admits, a tad bit softer. “I grew up with this in my backyard.”

“And I grew up a two minute walk away from McDonalds,” Peter reasons. “We all have pros and cons.”

That makes Harley snort, and Peter notes that he lasted about two minutes before he’s drawn in by the wonderful sound of Harley’s laugh and presses a sudden kiss to his lips. For a moment, Harley just laughs into the kiss, even as he instinctively reaches up to cup Peter’s face in his hand, and by the time that his laughter dwindles away, the stars have been forgotten and all that seems to matter is the two of them, laying back in the grass as the clock nears one in the morning, somewhere between teenage infatuation and a mature understanding of being something close to in love.

 

 

 

 

“I’m sorry, you fell asleep _where?”_

Peter tries really hard not to laugh as he works on pulling little blades of grass from Harley’s hair, though he has to physically bite his lower lip to stop himself from snorting as Harley lets out a resigned sigh and sheepishly murmurs, “Over in this little clearing behind the house. We were lookin’ at the stars.”

Really, they were heavily making out for, like, an hour, and then they got sort of groggy, and then they fell asleep around three in the morning while laying in the grass because they hadn’t had the energy to get up and stumble their way back to the house. From the speaker of the phone, they can hear Tony let out an exasperated sigh, though he sounds genuinely amused when he says, “So, you’re running late to catch the Quinjet that I sent specifically to bring you two home, because you fell asleep outside?”

“We’re only gonna be, like, an hour late, maybe,” Peter speaks up, squinting as he ruffles his hand through Harley’s, checking to see if there’s any grass left. Satisfied that he got it all, he nods his head once, lowers his hands to his sides, and says, “It’s not like we did anything bad, and we’re even letting you know so you don’t freak out when we don’t get there on time.”

“I wouldn’t freak out,” Tony says, not very convincingly.

Harley’s responding snort while Peter silently rolls his eyes is answer enough.

Scoffing, Tony puts on a defensive sort of tone, grumbling, “You know what? Maybe I’ll just have the Quinjet come back without you, leave you two stranded in Tennessee for a while.”

“Sure, Mister Stark,” Peter says sarcastically, rolling his eyes again. “We should be there by twelve fourty five. Sooner, if we can pack our bags super fast. Miss Angie is ready to go, so it just depends.”

“If you’re late, you’re screwed,” is all Tony says, but his light laughter can be heard chiming through the air before the call abruptly cuts off. Approximately thirty seconds later, Harley’s phone buzzes with two quick texts, which he quickly shows to Peter with another snort.

__

**_mechanic:_ ** _The quinjet will be waiting for you even if you’re late_

**_mechanic:_ ** _But if you’re late, I’m grounding your ass._

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _i thought pepper was in charge of punishments_

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _ya know_

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _since peter almost died once_

**_mechanic:_ ** _I regret ever telling you about that_

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _even if you hadn’t, peter told me, too, but in more detail, mr. “if you’re nothing without this suit then you shouldn’t have it”_

**_mechanic:_ ** _Well, I regret ever letting you two meet each other, then. It was a huge mistake._

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _are u sure about that_

**_mechanic:_ ** _Finish your packing, Keener. Pep’s bringing home pizza for some sort of welcome home thing, and if you two aren’t here in time, I’m eating all of it._

**_mini mechanic:_ ** _see ya soon mechanic!! :D_

 

 

 

 

Surprisingly, they almost make it on time, Angie’s car pulling into the secluded little area by the plane landing strip approximately ten minutes past noon, but when they get there, another car is already parked on the pavement, tinted windows hiding the people inside. Peter frowns, an uncomfortable feeling settling over him, but not one that seems to scream danger, so he bites his tongue as Harley asks, “Who’s that?”

Angie tries for a smile that looks more like a grimace as she puts her car into park and turns to face them in the back seat. “They wanted to say goodbye,” is all she says before the doors to the other car open and the familiar faces of the half siblings come to light. Instantly, Harley flinches, as if physically slapped by the mere sight of them, but Angie practically pleads, “I know you don’t want to see them, and I’m sorry, but they said that they had something important to say and I told them that if you want nothing to do with them after this then I won’t help them anymore, but please, Harley, just give them one last chance, okay?”

“I don’t—” Harley stops, sucks in a deep breath, and looks over to Peter, who’s already got a steely look of protection over his features, like he’s ready to fight for Harley if it comes down to it, and the tight feeling in Harley’s chest seems to loosen, just a bit. Still, he’s reluctant when he nods and says, “Fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Angie tells him again, but he doesn’t really acknowledge it as he gets out of the car and holds a hand out to help Peter do the same, and while Peter keeps an eye on the whereabouts of the halflings, Harley decides not to look at them yet, instead rounds the car to get to the trunk and pulls out their bags. If they want to talk to him, then they can talk to him—he doesn’t need to initiate the conversation.

Sure enough, once Harley’s brought the bags out and is swinging the trunk shut, Lucy is standing a mere five feet away, with Hannah holding her hand on her right and Sam standing to her left. “Hi,” is all she says, and it makes Harley swallow back a scoff because of how casual she sounds.

“Hi,” he says back, more tense than her, and he feels rather than sees when Peter comes closer, their shoulders brushing together. Harley frowns, doesn’t hide the dead tone to his voices when he asks, “What do you want? I dunno if you noticed, but there’s a jet behind you waiting to take us home, so be quick.”

Hannah—the only one that Harley isn’t really upset with, because she literally looks, like, seven or eight, and Abbie seems fond of her, and how could he hold a grudge with someone so quiet and innocent looking?—is surprisingly the one to respond, and she sounds as business-like as someone her age can when she tells him, “Lucy and Sam weren’t very nice to you.”

Despite the situation, Harley finds the ends of his lips quirking up into a slightly amused half smile, and he can see out of the corner of his eye that Peter seems to have the same reaction. To Hannah, in as much of a pleasant voice that he can manage, he says, “You sure are right about that.”

“Han,” Lucy cuts in, though she has a fond little smile on her face when she shakes her head at her little sister, and with a huff of a sigh and an eye roll, Hannah lets go of Lucy’s hand and goes over to where Abbie and Angie are standing ten feet away, pretending they can’t hear everything that’s happening. Despite Abbie being just a few months shy of her twelfth birthday and at least three years older than   
Hannah, she still brightens up when she sees her, and Harley thinks that it might be good for her, bonding with these half siblings and having someone other than just their mom and Harley as family. At the very least, Hannah seems to have a similar sense of attitude when she isn’t being all shy, and the two can be like sisters while Harley and Lucy and Sam avoid each other like the plague.

With a little sigh, Harley turns his attention back to the two in front of him, and Sam is sort of just looking at the ground and scuffing the toe of his shoe against the ground, while Lucy seems to be silently hyping herself up for whatever it is she wants to say. Harley is about to make some sort of unnecessary snide comment, but Peter beats him to it, only sounding vaguely disgruntled as he says, “We really are in a hurry, so if you could just, like, say what you wanna say, that’d be super helpful.”

“Right,” Lucy says, sort of breathes it out nervously as she wipes the palms of her hands against her shirt and glances over at Sam before leveling her gaze on Harley. “So, we know this might be- might be kind of overstepping it, showing up here when you’re about to leave, especially unannounced and everything, but we really wanted to say this before you left, but we’re still sorry for the invasion, and I’ll try to make this really quick.” She pauses there, and Sam looks up then, glances between Harley and Peter with a genuine sense of regret in his eyes, which only deepens when Lucy goes on to say, “Basically, we just wanna say we’re sorry. We kind of… we didn’t really take your feelings into consideration with this whole thing, and we were so caught up in the fact that we just lost our dad that we didn’t really think what it would feel like for you. Because he was an amazing father to us, and from what we’ve heard, he was just as good of a dad for you, but our mom filled us in last night and… and I already knew he left you guys, you said it already, but hearing it from her really made me understand that what he did was really fucked up. It doesn’t matter if he was a good dad, because he did something really horrible to you two, and we just waltzed into your house and acted like we understood you, and- and I realize now that we were acting like you were obligated to want to know us when you aren’t, and…” Lucy trails off, looking off to her right and sinking her teeth into her lower lip as she contemplates how to continue. Then, a moment later, she lets out a shaky sigh and shakes her head, finishing with, “Basically, we were being assholes to you when you were already dealing with something, and that’s not okay, and we know this might not make it better, and if you still want nothing to do with us then we’ll try to stay out of your way, but we just… we talked it over and none of us could handle the idea of not saying sorry before you left.”

For a long moment, Harley doesn’t respond, but he does feel Peter settle a gentle hand on the small of his back, and he does let himself really ponder over her words, weighing them in his mind and allowing the fact that she’s being genuine sink into his skin. Then, speaking a bit slow and careful, he replies, “I don’t really know if this changes much, but I am grateful for the apology, and maybe, down the line, I might be able to try and actually get to know you. For now, though, I just—I don’t think I can. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sam says, his tone soft and almost a little pleading. “Lucy meant it when she said all of us are sorry, and there’s nothing you need to apologize for. We just wanted you to know that we’re—”

“That you’re sorry,” Harley cuts in, and almost snickers a little at how repetitive the conversation seems to be, but he can’t really bring himself to laugh. Instead, he tries for some kind of smile, and it’s sort of twisted and likely more of a grimace, but it’s the best he can manage as he tells them, “Thanks, I guess.”

It’s not much, but Lucy and Sam both look relieved to have been able to say anything at all, and with nothing more than a slight nod in place of a goodbye, they wave Hannah over, get into the car they came in, and drive away. Harley watches the vehicle go until it’s out of sight completely, and once they’re gone, he lets out a shaky breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. Peter shuffles a little bit closer to him, the hand resting on Harley’s back moving over to his hip instead, and he keeps his voice quiet as he gently asks, “You okay, Harls?”

And it’s not really a lie when Harley nods and says, “Yeah, I think so. Just ready to go home, I think.”

“Well, in that case—” Peter squeezes Harley’s hip once in a silent reassuring gesture before stepping away to grab their bags again, and his grin is equal parts soft, fond, and excited as he nods towards the jet that’s still waiting for them to board, “—let’s get on this thing before Tony decides to leave us stranded here.”

 

 

 

 

Their flight back to New York is a lot different from the one they took to Tennessee.

For starters, Harley’s already in a better state now than he was a week ago—not magically healed from the stress and strain of such a complicated situation, no, but he’s not switching through drastically different moods on the flip of a switch, and he’s in a genuinely good mood as they put on a movie to watch and squeeze into one seat instead of trying to sit next to each other. Neither of them really pays attention to the movie in the slightest, and honest to god can’t remember what film they picked out in the first place, but instead they whisper jokes to each other and laugh to the point of tears and wind up kissing each other silly because that’s easily one of their favorite things to do. By the time the movie ends, they’re halfway back home and both of them are dozing off, and the rest of the flight is spent napping while entangled in each other, and even when they land and Tony ambles up the steps in confusion because they didn’t immediately leave the jet upon arriving, they remain asleep.

And maybe Tony takes a picture and sends it to his group chat with Pepper, May and Happy before shaking them awake and laughing at the way they flail and fumble out of their seat and onto the floor.

Being back in New York is—quite ironically, considering the pollution of the city—like taking a breath of fresh air for the first time in a long time. They’re on the rooftop of the tower, and there’s a nice summer breeze in the air, and Harley looks out at the city, at the skyscrapers and the sunlight and the sense of ease he feels when Tony gives both of them a warm hug. He knows that Pepper is on her way with the pizza she promised to pick up on her way home, and May is finishing up her shift before making her way over for dinner, and Happy already nodded and smiled in greeting before grabbing their bags from the plane, and Ned and MJ are already waiting for them downstairs because Peter arranged to have them picked up beforehand, but Harley doesn’t want to go inside yet.

Because Tennessee isn’t home, hasn’t felt like home in a long time, but this is. Here, in New York. And his good for nothing dad, buried six feet under in Rose Hill, had nothing to do with it, and something about that makes it feel more pure and wholesome and loving. William Keener-Marsh was a loving father that left when Harley was seven, and Harley doesn’t care anymore, because he never needed Will, and this only proves it. And that, he thinks, it fucking beautiful.

He grins at the city, feels the breeze blow through his hair, and he says, “God, I’m glad I’m back.”

Peter holds his hand and smiles wide and walks shoulder to shoulder with him when Tony leads them inside to wait for the rest of their makeshift mess of a kind of family to arrive, and Harley feels whole.

(And when they’re eating pizza later, the teens lounging on the love seats and the adults settled on the couch, Tony clears his throat and claps his hands and announces, “We got it settled.”

“Got what settled?” Harley asks, even as Peter’s eyes go wide with immediate understanding and Pepper rests a hand on Tony’s shoulder with a strange look on her face.

“The Rogues,” Tony tells them—news that Ned and MJ maybe aren’t supposed to know, but Harley and Peter would tell them anyway, so there’s no point keeping it from them. “The accords are still kind of a mess, but they’re pardoning the Rogues on the condition that they’re willing to bargain and help build the new accords, make them something both sides can agree on.”

Peter drops his pizza and Harley can see that his hands are shaking and he doesn’t understand, head tilted slightly to the side, brows furrowed in worry. “Why do I feel like there’s more than what you’re saying?”

Tony sighs, looking somehow stressed and relieved at the same exact time, and he says, “Well, part of the agreement is that they need to be contained until the new accords are put into place. Kind of like house arrest, like what Lang and Barton got, except they don’t exactly have houses to be limited to. So, as a compromise, they’ll be stuck here for a while. At least, until I can get Ross to move them to the compound, instead, but they’d have to agree to that, and after everything… I don’t think they will.”

“They’ll be stuck… here?” Harley repeats, baffled. “As in, the tower? As in, the place we live? The Rogue Avengers, who I’ve never met, who left you to die, who’ve been on the run from the government for almost _two years…_ they’re going to be living here?”

Suddenly, Peter’s hands shaking making a lot of sense, because Harley’s hands are shaking, too, and Tony seems remorseful when he nods his head and says, “Yeah, they will be. It probably won’t be another month or two until they actually move in, but… but yeah.”

Ned and MJ are watching the interaction with wide eyes, and May looks thoroughly disgruntled as she reaches over to rub a hand in circles against Peter’s back, and Pepper is professional enough to steel her features over but the fire in her eyes is clear as day. Harley pushes his plate away, the rest of his pizza no longer seeming all that appetizing, and all he can bring himself to do is murmur, “Well, shit.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET ME MAKE SOMETHING CLEAR!!
> 
> i am NOT anti team cap. i love team cap. i love the rogues. however, mcu team cap does kind of piss me off at times and i am definitely team iron man in the whole civil war thing. that means that this series will (obviously) lean in favor of team iron man, but the way the series goes means that i will have the rogues redeemed and i will try to be unbiased when officially introducing them to this series. that being said, i'm not going to just shit on team cap because, like i said, i fucking love them with my whole heart and don't like bashing on them. i just think they need to earn their place.
> 
> which is why the next multi-chapter installment will be called earning a place, but before that, i'll be posting a one shot called when healing hurts, which will probably be posted within the next few days because i have the first quarter of it already written and i'm really excited to write it even though it's some uhhhhh ouch. some hurt/comfort. some angst. some whump. but a happy ending and an important plot moment happens! so! yay! plus the parkner content in whh is *chefs kiss* 
> 
> anyway, let me know what u think!! hopefully this sequel has been satisfactory and the rest of the series doesn't let you down!!

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is spider-lad let's fuckin party


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